Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner in One Night Only. Photograph: Nicole Rivelli View image in fullscreen Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner in One Night Only. Photograph: Nicole Rivelli Comedy films Review One Night Only review – sex is legal for 12 hours a year in bizarre romcom ‘What if The Purge was for premarital sex?’ is the odd, gimmicky elevator pitch for this slickly made yet ungainly oddity that can’t quite get past the grimness of its conceit
Benjamin Lee Wed 5 Aug 2026 18.00 CEST Last modified on Wed 5 Aug 2026 18.26 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google G oing into a romcom, there are always the same questions. Will there be genuine chemistry? Will the rom and the com be equal in parts? And, for the last decade and change, will this be the one that finally resurrects a genre long past its prime? But for Universal’s glossy late summer offering One Night Only , notably the first wide-releasing romcom since April , there are more probing questions than usual. The film is the ungainly result of a four-cocktails-in elevator pitch which imagines a world where single people are only legally allowed to have sex on one night of the year, an idea that has seen it been referred to as “Sex Purge”.
On paper, it’s the set-up for a grim Handmaid’s Tale -adjacent horror of a totalitarian state insisting extreme control over the body, but instead it’s used as the backdrop for a sunny meet-cute, screams of protest drowned out by a zippy Top 40 soundtrack. One sits down wondering not just if boy will end up with girl but also how the government would be able to enforce such tyranny and what horrifying punishments lay in store for those willing to pick personal freedom over state-mandated abstinence. If it sounds like far too much for a breezy summer romp to take on, then that’s because it most definitely is, an overstuffed yet undercooked soufflé that can’t quite, ahem, rise to the occasion …
Read more Introductory text informs us, much to the baffled laughter of those at my screening, that “premarital sex has been outlawed in the US” and is now only legal for 12 hours on one night of the year. It’s a “government decreed sexual climate” where it’s now a “badge of honour” to be an incel, the result of what’s described as an “ideological grenade” thrown at Americans by Congress. People have been fitted with biosensors, which detect the chemicals released during sex, and they turn from red to green when one gets married or the sex purge begins, a night of debauchery and chaos as everyone desperately tries to find someone to couple up with (wouldn’t the other 364 days a year be used to plan this a little better?). Protection is mandatory (condom surge pricing goes all the way up to $2,000 apiece) and we’re briefly shown that the price to pay for breaking the law is severe (a poor older man is dragged into a police station for the crime of being horny).
New York City is where we spend that time, the natural setting for a film about both singledom and sex, and we follow the routes of Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (recent Oscar nominee Monica Barbaro ) as they hunt for sex against a ticking clock. Owen had a plan with his girlfriend ( Maya Hawke ) but she chooses the night as an opportunity to hook up with a neighbour, while Allie is urged by her queer roommate, who calls it a night “for the straights”, to put on a revealing dress and get herself out there. Their paths intertwine and for reasons that never quite make sense, decide not to have se…