One Night Only

Synopsis:  In a near-future U.S., sex among unmarried couples is illegal except one night a year. Allie and Owen meet and might hook up and/or fall in love.

Outlaw sex and what will happen? People will still have sex. Not a shock. It’s one of Nature’s imperatives.

In One Night Only premarital sex is outlawed in the United States. However, there is one night a year that it’s legal. I don’t doubt that the law would be broken because you can’t outlaw lust, but on this 12-hour furlough singles don’t have to hide sexual activity. People can really get their ya-yas out.

Going in, you should know that this is not a drama with political commentary like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Nor is it a political satire like Don’t Look Up. It’s a rom-com with a gimmick. So don’t expect to see any goon squads persecuting people or any hypocritical lawmakers.

Just like taking away women’s reproductive rights isn’t funny, taking away adults’ bodily autonomy doesn’t strike me as humorous. But the movie wants us to laugh at sex-starved people getting 12 hours to hurry up and find a sex buddy. Every unmarried adult (and teen?) has a biosensor that registers when a person is having sexual pleasure. I’m not sure if masturbation is okay in this brave new world.

Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner), who live in New York City, want to have sex. Not with each other. They haven’t met yet. Owen owns a pizzeria and has a girlfriend, Malika (Maya Hawke). Owen is planning on having sex with her. And he might even propose. He lets his single employees off early and heads out for what should be smooth sailing.

Allie is a singer who makes a living recording commercial jingles. Think the song ‘Brave,’ but with lyrics that advertise meds for migraines. She lives with her friend Arya (Quintessa Swindell), who is gay. Idk if gay sex or marriage is illegal but Arya opts to stay in and babysit some middle school kid, Troy (Mateo Ray). The kid tries to act cool and makes sexually inappropriate remarks. Because isn’t a boy sexually harassing a woman/teen girl cute? Nope. We saw that sh** on kids’ shows That’s So Raven and Hannah Montana. The trope about sex pesting as a boy’s rite of passage was even in the otherwise good movie Crazy, Stupid Love. Anyway…

Allie changes into a glamourous dress and sky-high heels to meet up with her friend Jacinta (King Princess). When she gets to the bar, she and her friend say they won’t rush into anything with potential sex partners. But when Allie zips off to the loo, she comes back and her friend is taking off with some rando guy.

This didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean, these singles have had all year to arrange their hookup/s. Dating apps would make it easy. Crushes would have a huge incentive to make their move and ask for a sex date.  But no, people are eating up valuable time doing pub crawls.

Owen’s romantic plans fall through when his girlfriend (btw, Maya Hawke is wasted in a cringey cameo), tells him she wants to sleep with someone else. Ouch. Not a good set-up for a proposal. Owen slouches home to talk to his mom. But she doesn’t have much time to console him because she wants to hurry up and have sex with her neighbor. I wasn’t sure how to feel because Owen’s mom is Molly Ringwald and the neighbor is Levar Burton. On The Secret Life of the American Teenager Molly’s mom character had time to listen to her pregnant teen daughter played by Shailene Woodley. And I couldn’t help but be surprised that Levar, the face of PBS’ Reading Rainbow, wasn’t busy researching children’s literature. I was glad when Owen left the house and ran into Allie. But they have a misconnection on the street.

As the two separately make their way around the city, we see RESIST signs in the windows of residences and shops. If a government was strong and sinister enough to enforce all adults being implanted with biosensors, I doubt they’d tolerate open protest.  I reminded myself that this is a comedy. But was sickened to see how bad things had become when Owen happens upon a street scene being filmed for a cop movie starring Bobby Cannavale… okay… and, oh blech, Pete Davidson. Pete Davidson? Aren’t the people of New York suffering enough without Pete Davidson movies being sent out into the world? Maybe he can go back to Saudi Arabia and do a comedy set about the severe curtailing of people’s human rights there. (To be fair, Pete D. explained that he was doing it for the money. Duh!!!) Okay! Back to comedy…

As the night speeds along Owen and Allie keep running into each other. They are both out looking for condoms, but every place seems to be sold-out. Again, people have had all year to plan, but not Owen or Allie or any potential partners. They team up to find a good party, hopping in a van to what they hope will be the party that they find somebody sex-worthy. On the way there, Owen gets flirty. Allie rolls her eyes and says, “Not going to happen.” He grins and says, “I’m not interested.”  What follows is actually refreshing because after she turns him down, he still treats her like an actual human being worthy of interest. Bravo! We need more people (ahem, straight & bi guys) who don’t just act nice to get what they want but actually are nice.

Allie and Owen keep almost having sex with others, but we’ve seen the way Owen looks at her when she sings and how she looks wistful when she spots a pizza box from his pizzeria. Maybe she’s just hungry. At one point she has pizza at his place and says it is the best pizza she’s ever had. Okay, they appreciate each other’s avocations and the clock is running down…

I hope that this is not also the purge world, like in the movie Purge where people get one day a year to try and kill each other with no ramifications. Anyway, the flaw in both movies is that people who want to have sex with each other or kill somebody will not wait a whole year. Unless they get mono or something and just don’t have the energy.

Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut:

Grade:  C

Cut to the Chase: There’s a potentially better movie here without the dumb gimmick. I’d like to see the two leads in better movies.

Humor Highlight:  When Allie realizes that a guy she kinda liked was gross after he starts singing a ‘sexy’ song to her.