One Night Only – Film Review

Director – Will Gluck
Writer – Travis Braun
Stars – Callum Turner, Tyonne Chambers, Grace Dumdaw

And the winner for most unlikely premise for a movie this year is….. One Night Only. We are in modern-day America, but quite a different one from what we are familiar with. Three years ago, ‘The Mandate’ was passed by Congress. In this mandate, premarital sex is illegal except for one night of the year! And that night is… tonight! We follow a pizza restaurant owner, Owen (Callum Turner), and an aspiring singer, Allie (Monica Barbaro), on their search for love.

As ever with these things, I’m fascinated with the details. The Mandate is controlled by an implant on the wrist of every individual. These implants monitor several ‘key indicators’ such as endorphin levels and also the proximity of other implants. The citizens have a tattoo that changes from its normal Red to Green for one night, when sex is permitted! It’s best not to think about it too much, and just to run with it.

Despite the high-concept and slightly bonkers premise, the film is essentially a rom-com, with Owen and Allie meeting through a series of coincidences during the night. They are both on their own and looking for the perfect partner who might be right under their noses.

The director, Will Gluck, is right after his last rom-com surprise hit with Anyone But You (Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell). The writer is Travis Braun, who, unusually, is mainly known for children’s TV, with Muppet Babies and Tots amongst his previous credits.

The premise and the trappings of the world are more interesting than the events themselves. With the population microchipped and controlled, it’s more like a sexy version of The Handmaid’s Tale, but the story doesn’t go in that direction. We see anti-mandate graffiti on the walls and in-jokes on posters and advertisements, but the focus is on comedy and the two young lovers. The main story is a series of set pieces revolving around our main characters, a failed ‘meet-cute’ and other random events. It’s rare to see a high-concept rom-com, and it does have more to say than a lot of the standard fodder out there, but there is also the feeling that more could have been done with it than telling a relatively formulaic love story. The two lead actors are enjoyable, as are the trimmings, but the course of young love is rarely altered.