I don’t want romcoms to just end up as streamer fodder. A great love story on the big screen hits just as hard as any crime thriller or superhero extravaganza. I’m glad Universal gave One Night Only a bigger budget for it’s big romcom. Just one question: when did we decide Will Gluck deserves the money? If Gluck is the romcom’s last hope, then bring on Zoey Deutch vehicles and smaller budgets; at least those films know what romcom means.
We’re not off to a great start with the pitch. Pizza owner Owen (Callum Turner) and voiceover singer Allie (Monica Barbaro) prepare for the big one night only of the year. It’s basically the Purge for Sex: one night a year, the conservative US government allows single people to have as much sex as they want. We’re off to a bad start: Owen’s almost fiance (Maya Hawke) decides she wants to get weird with someone else, and Allie’s best friend (King Princess) finds a literal Prince Tejan (Okieriete Onaodowan) immediately and runs off to hook up. But hey, nights early right? Plenty of time for a New York City night of frivolity and fornication.
One Night Only thinks it has a straight when it should have been playing for a flush. I can see Gluck pitching the sex Purge movie to the older movie producers, who think this is “edgy” for their taste. That pitch gets the movie made…but it’s also the albatross across its neck. Gluck’s sentimentalities are more high school freshmen levels of storytelling, simple and easy to understand. He tries to wrap some light political commentary as a runner through his romcom to explain the dumb premise, but the takes are so surface level and poorly thought out that they crash and burn as soon as they begin. Even the sex part is weirdly done: the movie is melbatoastly directed, leaving all of it to the imagination save one great scene with the movie’s best cameos. There’s so little titillation that I started to wonder if One Night Only was secretly a conspiracy by puritans to go back to Nancy Reagan 1980s living, making you feel more and more icky every minute you spend thinking about the stupid title.
The saving grace is the bigger budget use of location. This isn’t green screen general city. This is New York City, the mecca of what’s happening forever and ever. There’s a magic to the city very few other places can match, like a place of infinite creativity, excitement, and adventure. The best parts of One Night Only put Allie and Owen on the run toward one sexual escapade or another. That thrill of endless possibility propels us from setpiece to setpiece. Some results are gross, some results are funny, some are unexpected, and in the end we’re gonna have some pizza. Put Callum Turner in a cute polo, and Monica Barbaro in thot chic, and you have a recipe for a rose colored celebration of NYC, in all its forms.
Is Will Gluck gonna finish his big city love trilogy, having just done Anyone But You in Sydney? I kinda want to see what he’d do in a place like Paris or Barcelona. But I think it would be funnier if instead we get a place like Branson, or Gdansk, or Khluna Bangaladesh. That would give Gluck a free license to make whatever 75 year old approved safe romcom he wants, but more importantly, give Zoey Deutch a chance to elevate out of “streaming star” we’ve sadly pigeon holed her into. Trust me, she’s got the juice. That joke attempt was about as good as One Night Only’s pitch. Sorry y’all I’ll do better next time.