One Night Only review: A ridiculous rom-com that knows exactly how ridiculous it is

One Night Only movie review: One Night Only follows two strangers through New York on the year's only legal night for premarital sex. The film leans into its absurd premise for chaotic laughs, even as its sharper ideas remain mostly unexplored.

In Short

• The story follows two strangers through New York's annual premarital sex night
• Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner anchor the chaos with easy chemistry
• Rapid-fire gags and bizarre encounters keep the film energetic, if exhausting

What if you could have sex only once a year? Not as a personal challenge, but because the government said so. That is the wonderfully absurd premise of One Night Only, a rom-com that takes one outrageous idea and keeps throwing increasingly ridiculous situations at it. And surprisingly, it works.

The film follows Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner), two strangers navigating New York on the one night of the year when premarital sex is legal. What begins as a quest for romance, or at least a memorable hookup, quickly turns into a chaotic night of misunderstandings, bad decisions and increasingly bizarre encounters. It is funny. Sometimes genuinely so.

There are moments when One Night Only can feel as though it is trying to squeeze in one more giggle before you have finished laughing at the previous joke. One gag leads to another, then another, and the film occasionally seems terrified of leaving even a few seconds without a punchline. It can be exhausting. But more often than not, the sheer commitment to the bit makes you cackle.

The absurdity is the film’s biggest strength. Everyone in this world seems to have accepted that there is one designated night for sex, and the film rarely pauses to question how ridiculous that is. Instead, it builds an entire social ecosystem around it. People plan for the night, businesses prepare for it and strangers behave as though this is simply another annual event. Watching the characters navigate something so completely bonkers with a straight face is often funnier than the jokes themselves.

Barbaro and Turner help enormously. There is an easy charm between them that keeps the film from becoming just a string of comic sketches. Allie and Owen are surrounded by chaos, but their relationship gives the film something to hold on to. Barbaro brings an appealing confidence to Allie, while Turner plays Owen with just the right amount of awkwardness and bewilderment.

Additionally, One Night Only is packed with familiar faces, celebrity appearances and pop-culture references, some of which arrive so unexpectedly that one’s reaction to it becomes part of the joke. From Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney appearing in cheeky visual references to appearances by Pete Davidson, Bobby Cannavale, Julia Fox, Nicholas Braun, Mike Birbiglia, Jay Ellis, Flavor Flav, Este Haim, Ziwe and others, the film seems to be playing its own version of celebrity bingo.

The best part is that many of these appearances are so fleeting or deliberately ridiculous that they don’t feel like traditional cameos designed to stop the movie. They become another layer of the joke. You spot a familiar face, register what is happening and, before you can fully process it, the film has already moved on. It is silly, self-aware and, at its best, hilarious.

There is also something inherently amusing about how seriously the film commits to its own nonsense. A premise this absurd could easily collapse under the weight of its own stupidity, but One Night Only mostly understands that the less it tries to justify everything, the better it works.

That said, the film does leave some of its more interesting ideas on the table. A society where the government regulates consensual sex could have made for a sharper satire about control, bodily autonomy and modern dating. Instead, the film largely chooses the joke over the deeper conversation. That isn’t necessarily a flaw if you approach it as a broad comedy, but it does make the world-building feel thinner than the premise promises.

The pacing also occasionally suffers from the film’s determination to keep the laughs coming. Some sequences feel like they exist primarily to deliver another gag, cameo or comic detour. The 102-minute runtime may seem apt, but you can feel the narrative stretching at times, which could have been avoided. A good 90-minute runtime wouldn’t have hurt. Yet even when the film becomes a little too eager to entertain, it is difficult to deny its infectious energy. And that is ultimately what makes One Night Only work.

It isn’t particularly interested in being a sophisticated dystopian satire; it is here to make you laugh at the sheer absurdity of two people trying to find love — or sex — in a world that has turned both into a bureaucratic annual event.

Some jokes land. Some cameos are blink-and-you’ll-miss-them. Some scenes feel like the filmmakers are throwing everything they have at the screen and hoping something sticks. Enough of it does.

One Night Only is silly, chaotic and occasionally overstuffed, but it is also surprisingly charming. It makes you chuckle, it makes you cackle, and every once in a while, it catches you completely off guard.

One Night Only is in theatres now.

- Ends