What if you could only have sex one night a year unless you were legally married? That’s the bizarre premise of the even more bizarre rom-com One Night Only, nick-named the “sex Purge movie.” Directed by Will Gluck (Anyone But You, Easy A), here is a mainstream studio rom-com with a dystopian sci-fi twist, and I cannot stop thinking about what a weird miscalculation this whole movie is. Rather than worrying whether down-on-his-luck, recently dumped nice guy pizzeria man Owen (Callum Turner) will find a rebound, or whether struggling singer and sexually frustrated Allie (Monica Barbaro) will find a man worthy of her desires, instead I just kept wondering more about this nightmare world.

Given that the setting is a fascist government state where those in power are regulating people’s bodily autonomy, it feels really strange to take this scenario and turn it into a breezy rom-com. It’s not that you can’t set comedies across any landscape of tone, but significant work needs to be ably handled to make that work. As an extreme example, imagine a meet-cute between a star-crossed couple of crazy kids that just can’t get enough of each other, complete with wise-cracking gay best friends, set in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Hopefully you just winced reading that. It feels like a miscalculation to tell this kind of story with this tone and with this setting. Frustratingly, the movie rarely engages with the larger implication of its fascist state, and that’s exactly where all of my thinking went. I didn’t so much care about the characters as I did this scary world they seemed too blithe to contemplate. If this totalitarian government is so against premarital sex, why do they even allow for one available night? Wouldn’t having no available time force more people into marriages? Why would they even allow a “sex purge night?” Along those lines, what is the divorce rate in this universe? I would assume numerous very determined and very horny singles would be shacking up for many a weekend marriage that they could then annul. Once you’ve got the official matrimonial ring on that finger, does that thwart extra-marital sex? Can you cheat on your spouse, as long as the person you’re cheating with is also married? If that’s the case, what’s stopping every person at the age of early adulthood from getting married to the first agreeable person, shaking hands, and going about their business for the rest of their lives until they actually may want to settle down with a legitimate partner? How exactly is masturbation covered? Why does the conservative fascist government look the other way when it comes to non-heterosexual activity? That seems certainly out of character for repressive regimes policing people they despise. Wouldn’t there be a seismic exodus of unmarried people to other countries that permit premarital sex? Wouldn’t there be a natural brain drain of young professionals leaving the American work force? It’s a world that doesn’t make sense and the more you pull at the edges, the more it all unravels, and that’s all I wanted to do, because this setup was so bizarre and unique, I just wanted to keep exploring this alternate world.

There’s another aspect that the sex during this one night of physical freedom must be used with a contraceptive. Much of the movie becomes a chase to find a condom, strangely like a 1997 Jennifer Love Hewitt sex comedy The Trojan War. This didn’t make sense to me. First off, wholesalers should be selling out of condoms and up-charging them all week leading up to this event considering the incredible rise in demand approaching. How does the government know whether or not someone’s genitals have a thin latex barrier over them? Even if that stopped your traditional hetero sexual congress, you’re going to tell me enterprising and horny people are going to limit themselves to only one option? More so, if this is indeed a conservative American government, and considering they’re oppressively dictating people’s bodily activities, I’d say that’s clear, then they also likely subscribe to the panic that not enough Americans are having enough babies. The insistence of contraceptives would seem antithetical to their larger goals of a higher birthrate. Imagine a government office making sure certain people get condoms and others don’t. I did laugh at Owen trying to improvise a condom in desperation. Imagine baby booms every nine months after this sex purge. It seems believable given the circumstances. Again, all I want to do with this movie is pick apart its strange cracked-mirror world-building, which we don’t often get in rom-coms.

I’ll say that this premise could have worked but it needed a different setting. It needed to be in a more fantastical and altered version of a near-future world, something akin to 2009’s Timer or a Black Mirror episode. It can be recognizable but it shouldn’t be too recognizable given the fantastical nature of its premise. Maybe it’s about a couple trying to go through the bureaucratic hoops and hurdles and paperwork to apply to have a sexual relationship, something more akin to runaway regulation and satire than merely a fascist police state that wants to make unmarried people second-class citizens.

The problem with releasing this movie with this premise with this setting in 2026 is that the United States is already undergoing the starts and stops of a government more politically aligned with fascism than democracy. For many, especially those in vulnerable communities, it’s not hard to imagine a universe where government-controlled sexual health is a reality when the current administration is stripping people of rights, protections, and especially bodily autonomy for women and the trans community. It’s harder to brush this daunting and terrifying reality aside to sit in a theater and giggle at familiar meet-cute antics and rom-com plot devices when this world seems too close to our own. And when the movie is so resolutely incurious about analyzing its universe, then it becomes even worse. Rather than being some kind of revolutionary act of defiance, an exploration of the forces being oppressed by this regime and their refusal of acceptance of this absurd status quo, it demonstrates a myopic acceptance, rolling over and trying to live one’s life while ignoring the ills of society. Again, you could fashion a rom-com happening during Nazi Germany where a charming boy meets beautiful girl and their whirlwind courtship just happens to be while the neighborhood is being evacuated of specific minorities, with the characters shrugging and going about their days without larger comment. Does that seem enchanting? Does that seem like a good idea? I hope you would say no.

Can you turn off your brain and enjoy One Night Only? Every person is unique, so perhaps, but I might judge you a little for it, if I’m being honest. The comedy for me never rose above the occasional chuckle. It’s less a sex comedy and more a rom-com set in a fascist universe of puritanical repression. The comedy never rose above the questions for me, and the lingering bad taste of the movie’s universe and especially its characters’ attitudes to their world left me befuddled. There’s some pushback, which feels obligatory to check a box of red flag atonement, but the entire enterprise feels built upon such a drastic tonal miscalculation that it approaches in-universe propaganda. As so many of the randy characters eager for a physical contact are wont to hear, reader, you could certainly do better than this.

Nate’s Grade: C-