Going into the movie, I didn’t know why this high-concept comedy had a trailer that was meet-cute sweet, but really didn’t have a joke-jokes in it.
Then I saw the movie… and I still didn’t/don’t understand what was with the trailer.
What I heard from a number of people after the film and what I suspect we all will hear a lot more of is, “It’s better than the trailer.”
And it is.
There are a load of characters who the 2 leads know and/or run into throughout the film, some of whom are actually funny… like one joke each that is laugh-out-loud funny. But not in that trailer.
I assume that other jokes from the film just didn’t play well in trailer testing... that testing found that the only sweet spot for this concept was a sweet story of 2 sweet people seeking a sweet romance rather than just an athletic sexual outing…. that harder-edged jokes turned off women who were interested in the movie and didn’t turn on men at all. So out went the raunchy teen, the threat of parents having sex, the stupidity of men talking their way out of sex will willing women, police, slumming Eurotrash, emo rock gods, funny gross ad jingles, chasing condoms, etc, etc, etc.
All of those things and more are literally in this movie.
But still, it isn’t quite the movie it’s trying to be.
Before I try to explain why, let me tell you that I find the many writers referring to this movie as a variation on The Purge to be correct in fact, but dead wrong conceptually. Contemptuously so. The Purge is, while highly stylized, about a very serious notion… killing people as you like. Heavy threat. The idea of just being allowed to have single sex for 12 hours a year could be serious, but it isn’t remotely treated as such here… and I am fine with that. Very different movie.
Comparisons to After Hours are a bit closer to home. But still inadequate. Scorsese’s film about a night of adventure for an uptight computer guy who ends up trying to survive/get laid in the downtown after hours of New York and finding himself close enough to touch, but continually over his head, is a story with one protagonist. Paul in Wonderland, if you will.
Herein lies the first huge mistake on One Night Only. Paul Hackett may be trying to seem like a downtown guy in After Hours, but he isn’t and that is a big part of the fun. All the wild characters he meets rub up against his limitations, both of who they are and of who he is pretending to be.
In One Night Only, there are 2 protagonists who are somewhat unmotivated half-hearted participants. They both run into an array of people and circumstances that seem to get in their ways. But neither one of them is seriously enthusiastic about the 12 hours of legally allowed sex. They are willing. But neither of them is driven. Or repulsed. They are very similar to one another. Not sex averse, but they can live without it… even if it means missing the year’s window.
Drama needs conflict. And comedy really needs conflict.
So you get this big premise. Singles can only have sex one night a year. All kinds of possibilities. Of course, we all know that the couple will somehow end up together in the end and it will be about more than sex. Duh! But we’re there for the raucous, absurd, sexy journey. And the movie just can’t get it up for that.
The script, by tv-guy and first-time produced & released feature writer Travis Braun, has plenty of twists and turns. The problem is, they are all okay and none of them are really great. Why? They just don’t feel all that committed… kind of like our protagonists.
To put it in Bridesmaids terms, no one is willing to shit in the sink.
Bit after bit has a funny moment or beat and then, just isn’t that funny.
Why?
Or more to the point, WHY?!?!?!
I assumed this was a PG-13 movie, like other Will Gluck comedies. But I was wrong. This is R-rated. And aside from Easy A, Will Gluck’s non-family movies have been R-rated. But you would barely know it. There are people in various stages of sex and I guess there might have been a bare breast here or there. But I don’t really remember anything R-rated in this film. So I assumed it was PG-13.
There is a story structure that would work for this idea. Will Gluck is perfectly capable of directing that well. But it was like every major joke opportunity was just that far from being fully realized.
To wit, if you of your characters is scared of seeing their parent having sex, they need to come super close to seeing it… or they need to actually see it. A kinky costume is cute and maybe a brief laugh, but it’s not where a movie with this subject needs to be.
If your movie is about characters who really prize more than sex, but they are making themselves available to sex… LET THEM HAVE SEX!!!
I know, I know… they won’t be likable or audience won’t root for them after they just had sex with a stranger and now they are going to fall in love with someone else. But that is where the edge is in a movie about the only 12 hours in a year where sex is allowed. Take the leap and then earn it back. Completely doable. I mean, a major theme in the film is that as obsessed with sex as the world is, it’s not really that important. It’s not like these two lead characters are virgins. Grow up!!!
Even more, the awkwardness of each of the leads having sex with someone else and still wanting the other person actually sets up your ending. It emphasizes that sex, unless it is more, is not enough.
I’m avoiding spoilers, but it just doesn’t feel real when a character chooses to have sex with someone new and then claims they didn’t. We know they did. And it was disappointing. And that is why they come back. And that is why they deserve to be rejected.
It’s such a basic piece of storytelling.
I feel a little weird suggesting this… but I will. Ms. Barbaro wears a dress that her breasts threaten to fall out of all movie long. In a great sex comedy, like There’s Something About Mary, a moment as simple as one of her nipples showing itself while she is talking to Mr. Turner without her realizing and him not wanting to give it away is a whole scene with a lot of laughter. What does a decent guy in an R-rated comedy do when he gets a sneak peek and she doesn’t know it? I don’t care what your answer (or the screenwriter’s answer) is. It can be played 5 different very funny ways. It’s not sex… it’s just anatomy. And if you are offended for the actress, flip it… she’s talking to him and after some big physical stunt, his penis is showing. The exposed flesh is not the important part. It’s the reactions. It’s ANY intense reaction.
Remember Mary,,, the initial laugh is the semen on his ear… then going into the hair… but the hysterics in the audience really build when she is so happy and sweet with her hair stuck in place by it… and for so long.
Finally, there is this. For me, with a concept this high and wacky, the movie should feel like a Rube Goldberg machine. A leads to B which completely surprisingly leads to C which skips to H and then goes back to F and forward to G and then back to D and all of it feels perfectly assembled… motivated and quick and hard funny and just keep moving.
One Night Only feels like a meet-cute rom-com about 2 people who are so worn out, they just cant be bothered, but keep running into one another until they can’t avoid the idea that it’s just fate. That movie might be good or it might not. Bur it’s basically what is there amidst this big, fat, broad idea of the 12-hour sex window. The sex window is really a red herring. It’s not what the movie is.
Is that because Will Gluck wanted to make something else? Is it because they cast two industry-hot great-looking actors whose appeal is not going for it, but being restrained and a little emotionally unavailable? Is it because the sex jokes were too shocking to some test audiences, whether they were were or were not?
I will close with one actual example. There is a 13-year-old boy character in the film who is being “babysat” by a lesbian for $5000, because, she explains, gay women can get around the rules about sex and have been for centuries. The kid is a loud-mouth who talks to every woman like he can get them in bed. He’s kinda funny. But after all that crudeness, there needs to be a big payoff. In another time, he might have talked the lesbian Babysitter (the actress of which I would name if I was sure which character she was from the imdb page) into having sex with him… but that’s impossible in 2026 and yes, illegal. Alternately, the lead who is friends with the lesbian thinks that he talked her into sex (which he likely encourages verbally) and does something to move the story along on the basis of that assumption. Or maybe the lead is desperate for a condom and they negotiate some sexual perk for him so she can get it from him.
SOMETHING!!!
The kid with the big mouth (played by Mateo Ray) MUST pay off. The best joke can’t be his big kinda-blonde fro and nerdy glasses and the smart mouth. He is a big swing and he has no business in the movie without a big payoff.
As a movie fan, I would be thrilled to give them the absurd notion that our lead female rides a Citybike from Chelsea to the George Washington bridge in a shirt with one button buttoned and no bra in about 5 minutes without breaking a sweat. That’s movie magic.
But what follows seems to be a rip-off of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but like everything else in the movie, is like a rip-off with about 40% commitment to the theft.
I honestly feel like this script, written by someone else, really investing in the alleged idea, could be enormously fun and funny. But watch The Hangover. The boring groom guy, who is great looking and all, is barely in the movie. Then you have the super-good-looking kinda-asshole and the dentist who loses his tooth and falls for the hooker/stripper and the idea sidekick who can’t win for losing… then you add Mike Tyson with a tiger and the baby and the stolen police car and the. taser, etc, etc, etc. These are fully committed ideas.
I still want to fall in love with the movie. But as it is, it goes to the friend zone.
Until tomorrow…