Released: 6th August
Seen: 13th August
The year is 2013, and James DeMonaco makes his feature-length directorial debut with a film called The Purge. This is a big deal for James, because up to this point in his career James has mostly been a scriptwriter who got his start writing the script for Jack (that Robin Williams film about the boy who ages weirdly) but wasn’t really known for anything that special. He worked, certainly, but didn’t really get to make his mark. The Purge movie was going to make his mark; he wrote and directed it, got Ethan Hawke to star in his little low-budget horror film about a world where all crime, including murder, was legal for one night only; things were going well. Hell, the film made money, nearly 90 million on a 3 million budget. Everything should be going great… Unfortunately, the film got slaughtered in reviews.
The general consensus was that The Purge had a great political concept but didn’t actually deal with the politics that it brought up. It was a nothing film, an elaborate excuse for a home invasion film at best. Did James just take his money and run? Keep making empty-headed slop? No, he did not. Instead, future entries in The Purge series would become wildly political films that dealt with the realities of living under fascism, about class warfare, about racial injustice and government overreach. James took the notes, took his idea and actually tried to explore the political ramifications behind it because he wanted to make an interesting set of films… The people behind One Night Only, another film about a world where certain actions are deemed legal for only one night, don’t give a fuck about the implications of the world they built up; they just want to make a puritanical sex comedy which is such a stupid idea that no fitting comparison currently exists in the English language.
One Night Only takes place in a world where the US government has instituted a new law that forbids people from having premarital sex of any kind, something that is tracked using implants that everyone is forced to have (no, that’s not even a little constitutional, but that’s the least of this film’s problems). Part of this law allows for one specific night where single people are legally allowed to have premarital sex, provided that it’s with condoms because this is still an incredibly puritanical world and they’ll only compromise so much. On this night, pizzeria owner Owen (Callum Turner) plans on proposing to his girlfriend, but… oops, she thinks they should take advantage of the day of legally permitted premarital sex and sleep with other people for some incredibly stupid fucking reason that only makes sense because the person she wants to sleep with is Glen Powell.
Anyway, Owen tries to enjoy the night and ends up bumping into Allie (Monica Barbaro), a singer who mostly makes her living performing bad medical parodies of popular songs that are part of drug advertisements. They have an initially awkward meeting and split but keep bumping into each other throughout the night in moments that are meant to resemble meet-cutes, things like trying to steal the last condom (oh, condoms are mandatory for this night… because fascism) or getting into a secret party that is about as sexy as your average art gallery opening or meeting a famous singer who should probably just be able to point to someone and get his dick wet… point is, they keep having pointless sexless shenanigans all night until the end of the film at which point no one’s had a good time, no one’s gotten off and yet it still feels like I got royally fucked by the existence of this movie.
Will Gluck, the director of One Night Only, said that they cut out a ton of sex and nudity from this film because no one wants to see that. Sure, that’s a stupid statement to make in a post Heated Rivalry world, but it’s even more stupid when the entire concept of your film revolves around sex. I swear to god I have never seen a more sexless film try to tackle the topic of sex, it’s insane. It’s like the person who wrote this film, Travis Braun, is only vaguely familiar with the concept based on cave drawings they saw one time. It’s not even embracing the potential fun of the idea of a night where everyone can have sex wherever they want, everything must happen behind closed doors and out of sight between people who you fall in love with instantly or else it’s weird and wrong. For a film that’s meant to be about a night of fun in the middle of a dystopia, it really feels like everyone is rooting for the fascists here.
Now, I know it probably seems silly to bring fascism into a discussion about the rom-com about the one night of sex, but here’s the thing, the film did it first. The moment I went from thinking this film was just kind of dull to actively hating it was just one line, one simple line from the character Ezra Stone (Charlie Gillespie) that made me actually fume:
“Maybe the fascists were right about this one.”
Maybe. The. Fascists. Were. Right. About. This. One?
This film, this pathetic little film, sides with fascists. Not just in the dialogue of one idiot but in the central story we’re following. See, Ezra thinks the fascists were right because this one night of sex rule gave sex a special meaning and therefore made it romantic, and that’s basically the plot of One Night Only. The main couple keeps trying to have sex with other people but chicken out because it won’t mean anything; therefore, the fascists were right to take away everyone’s bodily autonomy and their sexual freedom because it meant that meet-cutes meant something. Are you actually fucking serious? Early in the film, they literally say this rule turned Incels cool and it’s not painted as a reason to start a fucking revolution?
Sure, there’s lip service paid to the idea of how wrong this all is, graffiti calling for an end to the mandate and a protest we never see that I’m certain was fucking pathetic but no one’s actually doing anything, they’re complicit in the fascism that they’re living under because it’s not directly hurting them (too much) so it’s not actually that bad. They even have one brief moment of acknowledging that queer people have been dealing with their sex lives being made illegal for years… but it’s one line, and it’s a joke, and apparently everyone is still just kind of fine with all this. Is this a little bit of overthinking for a stupid romcom? No, not when the romcom’s entire premise revolves around this concept! If you want to deal with the topic of a fascist regime that causes people to only be allowed to have sex once a year, that’s fine, but try not to side with the theoretical sex fascists because it makes you look really dumb.
There’s also just the fact that everything is just not funny. At best its mildly amusing; there are some mild chuckles to be had in the “We have to get a condom and there’s only one condom left in the whole of New York” sequence and seeing Molly Ringwald and Levar Burton covered in bubble wrap that’s apparently some form of weird bubble wrap kink got some kind of reaction out of me but for most of One Night Only, you just kind of wonder how no one is actually fighting against the tyrannical rule they’ve been placed under or at bare minimum fucking on every street corner they can find. At least in The Purge movies there are entire subplots about revolutionaries trying to stop the purge from happening and, in some cases, using non-violence as a form of resistance. The Purge movies weren’t great, but they got that they were dealing with heavy topics and at least tried to do something with them… One Night Only just thinks that everything’ll be fine and, actually, you don’t have to fight against fascism, just think of it like a year’s worth of foreplay before a really fun night where you get to have boring missionary sex with the lights on but only when the government says you can because that’s sexy… I want to vomit until the acid in my stomach creates a hole that I can bury myself in because just the thought of that depresses me so fucking much!
Now, for as much as I hate One Night Only (and I do, boy it’s fun when you know one of the spots on your worst of the year list), it’s not because of the actors who actually have incredible chemistry and make the most out of the puritanical garbage that they’ve been handed. Callum Turner is a genuine find as a leading man, able to blend being charming and funny in a way that feels effortless while also just having genuine leading man looks but with an interesting enough face that he doesn’t fully blend into the background like every other wannabe Abercrombie model out there. Meanwhile Monica Barbaro just has an energy to her that makes you want the best for her in every scene and can go from being incredibly put together to being fun and silly in a way that feels effortless, also the woman has some goddamn pipes and should be put in a lot more things that require her to sing because she made singing the word “psoriasis” seem only slightly less stupid than it actually was. Together they’re a powerhouse and boy, if only they were in a good movie it would be lovely.
One Night Only is a film that’s not just afraid of its core concept, it fundamentally doesn’t understand its implications. It creates a world of sexual fascism that doesn’t want to deal with the difficult discussions around that topic. At its best, it’s a brainless romcom with a weird concept; at worst, it’s fundamentally irresponsible in its treatment of the topics it’s decided to play around with. A sex comedy that’s neither sexy nor funny, a tale of fascism that sides with the fascists, a high-concept movie that you would have to be high to actually enjoy. When you know for a fact that the porn parody version of this film would be funnier and understand the core concepts better, that’s a problem.
Movie Meister Reviews 