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Review by James Lindorf
Will Gluck made two of the better romantic comedies of the last fifteen years with “Easy A” and “Friends with Benefits.” For fans of those films, he lost his way with “Annie” and the “Peter Rabbit” films, but “One Night Only” is a welcome return to form. The film combines a classic New York romantic comedy with a sexy take on “The Purge” and Universal Pictures is bringing it to theaters everywhere on August 7th.
The world of the film operates under a single unusual mandate. Once a year, for one night only, people are permitted to have premarital sex. The political and social implications of that premise, the overreach of government into personal lives, the complicity of tech companies, the shadow of conservative moral legislation, are present throughout in background jokes and asides. They could spin this off into another film that goes full “Idiocracy” with the mandate concept, and that movie could be very funny. Gluck was wise enough to keep it in the margins, because this is the story of two people finding each other while living in a political satire. Not only would bringing it to the front hurt the romance rather than complement it, but it could also harm the box office returns by being too divisive.
Recently dumped Owen (Callum Turner) and hopeful romantic Allie (Monica Barbaro) keep colliding across Manhattan over the course of the night. Pulled together and pushed apart by a series of missteps and comedic detours that generate the film’s central questions. How will these two people not have sex in a given moment, and when will they run into each other again? Some of the better cinematic blockers include sexually aggressive songs, an app mishap, and an epic hunt for a condom since 1997’s “Trojan War.” It is a reliable engine for most of the runtime before running slightly low on fuel in the climax. The repetition of the structure becomes noticeable and grating as viewers know exactly what will happen and are waiting for them to catch up. Emotionally, the story lands where it needs to. You can’t help but root for Allie and Owen even as they spend the night running around like horny idiots looking for one-night stands while fate keeps throwing them back together. The use of the boroughs, subways, and locations like the Little Red Lighthouse beneath the George Washington Bridge are specific New York details that make the city feel like an asset and not just the place the story is happening.
Barbaro is absolutely adorable and charming, from beginning to end. The restraint in creating the character really suits her and her comedic timing, which feels natural rather than performative. Barbaro is behind the microphone again as she was in “A Complete Unknown.” This time there is no folk music; instead, Allie turns popular songs into pharmaceutical parody ballads about products for intimate discomfort and psoriasis. She is introduced through one of these segments, earning the first big laugh of the film and signaling the film’s undercurrent of satirical humor. Turner, who demonstrated his romantic comedy credentials as a supporting character in last year’s “Eternity,” is a great scene partner for Barbaro here. Fans of that film will not be surprised by his ability to carry this kind of material. Their chemistry is genuine, and their banter is cute, especially when they are insulting each other. They are two people who clearly want something more lasting than the night is designed to provide but who also refuse to get out of their own way.
The weakest element in the entire film is a precocious twelve-year-old neighbor whose jokes feel like they were written by someone entrenched in middle age who asked an algorithm how children talk and received a series of generic responses. At least they managed to dodge the 67 bullet. It is the one place the film reaches for a demographic it does not understand, reminiscent of Gluck’s own struggles with creating family films.
The character may work if you just want dirty jokes, but for those looking for more, it always breaks up the momentum of the story. Along those lines, this is a film whose R rating promises more than they ever try to deliver in terms of skin. This will disappoint viewers expecting a more traditionally explicit, raunchy sex comedy experience. What “One Night Only” delivers instead is two leads who make you want more, and jokes that will work for a range of viewers while surprising them over and over with an extensive list of cameos on its way to earning a 4 out of 5.
Rating: R (Brief Nudity|Sexual Material|Language)
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): August 7th, 2026, Wide
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Will Gluck
Producer: Will Gluck, Jacqueline Monetta
Screenwriter: Travis Braun
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Production Co: Universal Pictures, Olive Bridge Entertainment
