What would the country look like if the government outlawed premarital sex for all but one night a year? That’s the basic question that One Night Only asks as it follows Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro’s characters in a romantic comedy hitting the 2026 movie calendar on August 7. The reviews are in, and while many critics have trouble getting past the “creepy” concept, they’re generally in agreement that the leads — Barbaro in particular — are enjoyable to watch.
Comparisons to The Purge are inevitable in the newest film from Will Gluck, whose last movie, Anyone But You, had an impressive box office run despite negative reviews. Callum Turner has also been making a name for himself with projects like Eternity and The Boys in the Boat, while Monica Barbaro was Oscar-nominated for A Complete Unknown. However, according to Marya E. Gates of RogerEbert, all that goodwill is lost on a script that merely nods at the “horrors” of our reality with a romance that falls flat. Gates rates One Night Only a 0 out of 4, writing:
Unfortunately, Travis Braun’s script is nothing but an edgy premise that exists solely to take milquetoast characters from one slapstick set up to another. It makes nods to the very real horrors of today, like tech bro-backed surveillance capitalism, rampant Big Pharma advertisements, and fascist police and politicians controlling our bodies, without ever taking the time to interrogate any of the sources that have led to our current political climate.
Guy Lodge of Variety says Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner are too hot for this movie, and the movie is “too creepy to be cute,” with its vibes of The Handmaid’s Tale. Turner, however, shows an off-kilter allure that complements Barbaro’s “spiky” presence in a way that makes Lodge want to see the characters’ relationship unfold in a less contrived setting. The critic says:
They make a lovely couple, too: good-looking, good-humored, generally good catches. Except we’re not remotely invested in their repeatedly delayed but wholly inevitable union, because what even is this? The more One Night Only tries to extract starry-eyed vibes from the most chilling romantic comedy premise in memory, the more the cognitive dissonance of it all gets in the way.
Alison Foreman of IndieWire gives this “flirty humiliation ritual” a C-, admitting it’s an interesting concept of a movie but is too “spectacularly incurious” about its world to be successful. Allie and Owen are frustratingly generic, Foreman writes in her One Night Only review, but Barbaro still shines. In the critic’s words:
Slightly more fun than its calamitous press cycle suggests, One Night Only is still a deeply unsettling misfire for the rom-com veteran [Will Gluck] that may bode badly for the genre overall. Sometimes funny but consistently uncanny, it feels like a filmmaker going through the motions of romance long after he stopped caring about real love.
Jake Coyle of the AP rates it 2 out of 4 stars, writing that the flick isn’t bawdy enough for its concept and not sweet enough for its romance. However, the movie is somewhat saved by the charm of its leads, the critic says:
One Night Only is less interested in extrapolating the potentially very bizarre ramifications of its dystopian concept than it is selling a surprisingly tame romantic tale. One Night Only may be dressed up as a raunchy sex comedy, but it’s a rom-com at heart, and a chaste one at that. That makes One Night Only a disappointingly denuded comedy without the gumption to interrogate its satirical gimmick. And yet its charming leads, Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, do enough to keep One Night Only pleasantly watchable.
Unlike the other critics, Matt Goldberg of The Wrap thinks its a good thing One Night Only doesn’t delve too deep into its “clearly oppressive and horrifying” politics. If you can get past that premise, Will Gluck allows you to settle in for a silly, delightful romantic comedy. Goldberg writes:
[The movie] feels like something more attuned to a grim social satire than a flirty rom-com, but execution is everything, and it manages to work in Will Gluck’s beguiling One Night Only. While not every question of how such a program would work is answered, Gluck admirably does as much world-building as he can to carry us along with a silly sex comedy. … With plenty of gags along the way paired with the strong chemistry between leads Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, One Night Only feels like the kind of movie that shouldn’t work, and you’re delighted that it does.
It looks like One Night Only has more misses than hits, drawing a 48% Rotten Tomatoes score. Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner do their best, but too many critics struggled with the oppressive, dystopian premise to fully lose yourself in any of the romance.
If you love these actors or this is a premise you find intriguing, don’t let any of the negative reviews stop you. One Night Only is in theaters now, as of Friday, August 7, so you can draw your own conclusions.
