I love a good rom-com. And it’s kind of a barren, desolate landscape these days when the genre is concerned. Filmmakers are still making quality rom-coms, make no mistake, but the majority of these films are cast aside and thrown to the streaming service wolves. But I think rom-coms have an important presence in movie theaters. Rom-coms are about escapism, and the communal experience of that is so important, it’s why we go to the movies. So, imagine my disappointment when one of the few romantic comedies we get in movie theaters this year is not really a romantic comedy at all, but a weirdly dystopian and stealthily evil conservative fever dream that’s encouraging its audience to accept and embrace fascist ideologies? Enter Will Gluck’s One Night Only. 

Three years ago, Congress approved a measure which allows the US government to strip its citizens entirely of bodily autonomy, making it illegal for unmarried people to have sex, except for one 12-hour exemption period where this ban is lifted. This measure forced every American citizen to install a tracking device on their wrist, tracking dopamine and other hormones, that looks like a small tattoo, and for 364 days and 12 hours, this tattoo is red, but then on that one crazy night it turns green. 

In this dystopian hell that looks like a modern day New York City, we follow Owen (Callum Turner), who owns and runs a pizza shop, that’s mysteriously still in business even though the pizza looks terrible. Owen is hoping to propose to his girlfriend (Maya Hawke), who dumps him right before the night begins, telling him she wants to sleep with someone else. Allie (Monica Barbaro) is a singer who’s looking to make a meaningful connection with someone on this titular night. The two keep running into each other while they pursue other people, eventually driving them into each other’s arms. But will they get with the program before the 12 hours are up and the fascist government owns their bodies again? 

Choosing to make a wacky, saucy rom-com about a government that’s depriving its citizens of bodily autonomy was a bad idea to begin with. One Night Only passively annoyed me for most of the runtime and then ended making me actively angry. Angry that this premise that could be fascinating, could say something really interesting about where we are right now, as we descend into the christofascist dystopian landscape the film presents, does nothing to explore the horrific implications of this world in any real way. The elevator pitch of ‘The Purge, but for sex’ had to sound intriguing to the execs at Universal, but the film that was actually made feels like it belongs more at Angel Studios. We see ‘Repeal!’ and ‘F the mandate!’ signs in apartment windows, but everyone in this movie seems to be way too chill about this horror they’re living in. They’ve just accepted it. The film ends on a message of ‘maybe the fascists were right, actually’ and that turns this movie from annoying and inept to actively evil.

Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner are fine, I guess. There’s a good romantic comedy that could be made with these two. They’re two beautiful people who have decent enough chemistry, but you’re never rooting for this romance because Travis Braun’s insane script keeps writing itself into a bigger hole than it can pull itself out of. As characters, they’re very thinly written, and neither actor is really given that much to work with. Barbaro, in particular, is trying like hell to give her character any sense of anything resembling something emotionally real, but she can only do so much. Probably close to a year ago, I saw someone on the internet describe Callum Turner as the Temu Josh O’Connor, and the blistering accuracy of that statement stuck in my mind throughout the entirety of this film.

This film also has a pretty cool supporting cast, and it’s all the more baffling what attracted all of these interesting performers to this unmitigated disaster. We have Molly Ringwald as Owen’s mother and LeVar Burton as her boyfriend, and neither has much to do but they’re a fun pairing, or at least they should be in theory. Maya Hawke plays Owen’s girlfriend who dumps him in the film’s opening moments, and she also has nothing to do. Charlie Gillespie, who was recently cast in a key role in season two of Heated Rivalry, pops up as a shallow rock star who Allie pursues. The film also doesn’t give him much to do, but he’s got a cool presence and he’s charming as hell, and I’m very excited to see what Gillespie does in his next gig. We also have the Tony-winning actor Andrew Burnap and original Hamilton cast member Okieriete Onaodowan in roles that mean nothing. 

Travis Braun’s script was on The Black List, a yearly collection of what’s considered to be the best unproduced scripts. I’ve seen it happen so many times where Black List scripts have the same problems – super high concept, with no idea of how to follow through on the ideas it presents. And that is One Night Only’s central problem but it’s not its only problem. Also the central idea of ‘what if our love was forbidden?’ is such a heteronormative idea. Like ‘what if the government made our love illegal?’ Queer people and people of color would like a word, but of course this script doesn’t think any of their historical oppression exists. This script is constantly raising questions it has no intention of answering. Questions about how this could possibly be enforced, questions about why this happened, and if the government is encroaching on the lives of its citizens in other ways, or if it’s just this one thing, questions about how the hell anyone is accepting this at all. And it’s hard to see this as a fun and flirty rom-com when every new thing we learn about this world elevates the horror of it all. This feels like if someone asked ChatGPT to generate a romantic comedy written by George Orwell.

Will Gluck is very good at the romantic comedy. Most of the time. Easy A, Friends With Benefits, hell, I’d even argue Anyone But You, have plenty of charm and laughter, and do a lot of what the romantic comedy does best. I don’t know how he’s so distinctively lost his way, but he’s lost it. You can tell the movie he wants to make is constantly at odds with the script Travis Braun has written. And it’s very hard to split the difference between dystopian hellish nightmare fuel and adorable, charming, sexy rom-com, and at a certain point Gluck’s film just stops trying. 

I almost didn’t bother writing a paragraph about the technical aspects here, because nothing here is memorable. Not the production or costume design, not the score, not the editing. Yaron Orbach is our cinematographer, and he’s approaching this as a classic New York City rom-com, but instead the New York in this film seems more like it belongs in a Black Mirror episode. Christopher Stracey and Este Haim composed the score. I love Haim, the band Este headlines with her two sisters Danielle and Alana. All three of these women are remarkably talented, and have a lot to offer audiences in the world of music. I have no idea why Este got herself wrapped up in this mess. She even has a cameo! And music supervisor Wende Crowley is responsible for some of the most godawful needle drops I’ve seen in a movie in years.

So, if it isn’t painfully clear by now, I did not particularly care for Will Gluck’s One Night Only. As a romantic comedy, it fails to make you care about the characters or root for their romance. As a satire, it’s completely toothless and inept. And choosing to end the film on a message of ‘maybe we should just accept and embrace what the fascists are doing’ feels incredibly thoughtless and dangerous. I don’t want to put on the tinfoil hat and succumb to conspiracy theory-adjacent thinking, but it sure does feel like Hollywood trying to normalize horrific concepts like this, so that when the government actually does something similar, the general population is too brainwashed, too desensitized, or too complacent to realize their lives and their bodies are not their own anymore. I’m not sure this is what Gluck and co. intended to do with this film, I hope it isn’t, but it’s definitely what the film does.