Directed by Will Gluck | Written by Travis Braun | 102 min | ▲▲▲

It occurs to me that both Anora  and The Materialists  may have kicked off a really interesting series of romantic comedies — all released in cinemas — that are identifiably within the genre but work hard to subvert it with delightfully weird dramatic and socio-political elements. I’m talking about Oh, Hi,  The Drama, and even The Invite. Is this genre finally coming of age in the 21st Century? Stay tuned.

Given I bring this up in a review of One Night Only, you might suppose this romcom also qualifies for the trend. Not quite. It’s reaching for something different, but not quite grasping it. It’s got a bonkers premise, one that qualifies the film as a fantasy or science-fiction, but despite that it ends up a fairly conservative genre entry. This from a filmmaker with a decidedly mixed achievement list; the excellent Easy A, the so-so Friends With Benefits, and the abysmal Anyone But You.

We’re in a summery, beautiful New York City that’s slightly different than the one we know. A presumably Republican, authoritarian regime in government has decreed pre-marital sex illegal. Every unmarried citizen of age is marked with a monitor implanted in their wrists, so if they get intimate with someone else an alarm goes off somewhere and they’re arrested. Masturbation is OK, apparently, and it sounds like gay sex isn’t as policed as the straights. That’s very hard to believe.

How this happened is left open to the imagination, but this societal hellscape seems, in most other ways, very familiar to the one we’re living in now.

However, one night a year, for 12 hours, the regulations are lifted. Call it The Sexy Purge!

Monica Barbaro is Allie, a singleton who is more interested in love and romance than sex, but willing to put on a super-sexy frock to go meet a guy in a bar. That doesn’t go so well.  Callum Turner (these days otherwise known as Mr Dua Lipa) is Owen, the owner of a pizzeria up near The Bronx, he’s looking forward to making it with his girlfriend, Maya Hawke, but she’s got other ideas. That has him out on the town looking for someone to take his feelings of rejection away.

Of course, Allie and Owen meet, but he doesn’t make a great first impression. As the night goes on, their paths keep crossing, but the script does a pretty good job of offering those requisite obstacles to keeping them apart, even as they’re getting more fond of each other each time they connect.

The charm here is legit, but it’s really tough to shake off the unpleasant broader societal implications of this premise. It sets up a satire, or even a genuine sex comedy, but neither emerges. It’s deeply tiresome that Allie can’t be someone who just wants to get laid, she has to be a woman who wants more than just sexual pleasure. Even in 2026, the female lead in an American mainstream movie can’t be driven only by desire, but the movie can imagine a nation that dictates the behaviour of its citizens in the bedroom and most people in the movie seem totally fine with this reality.

So, to enjoy we have to lean on the romcom of it all. There’s no doubt that the casting department have done their work well here, finding reams of hot young people making out all over the city — major PDAs, like Manhattan’s become Paris’ Left Bank.  Meanwhile Barbaro and Turner get some help in the supporting cast — some fun scenes with Molly Ringwald and LeVar Burton as Owen’s mother and her partner, and some cameos from folks as varied as Julia Fox, King Princess, and Este Haim.

This is also a solid New York In One Night movie, where the city itself is the romantic lead — unlikely to be remembered among the subgenre kings like The Warriors, After Hours, or even Nick And Nora’s Infinite Playlist, but atmospherically strong enough to be sitting behind home plate in Yankee Stadium while those others are up at bat.

As with all movies of this sort, it lives and dies on the writing and the chemistry between the central couple, and here there’s a lot to recommend it. Turner is very hunky, but his character is also a bit of a bro. I preferred him in Eternity, but then I’m probably not the key demographic for appreciating him in this movie.  However, Barbaro is fantastic.

I’m not sure if she’s a star yet — she shone in supporting roles in Top Gun Maverick, A Complete Unknown,and Crime 101, but she is especially wonderful here. She overcomes a lot of the more traditional restraints the script places on her character to be someone we genuinely feel for.  If people come out for this movie, hopefully it will go some distance to making her a household name.