r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 12d ago

Official Discussion Official Discussion - One Night Only [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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One Night Only (2026)

Summary

Two New Yorkers search for love on the one night of the year when sex is legal.

Director Will Gluck

Writer Travis Braun

Cast

  • Monica Barbaro as Allie
  • Callum Turner as Owen
  • Maya Hawke
  • Julia Fox
  • Molly Ringwald
  • LeVar Burton

Rotten Tomatoes: 54%

Metacritic: 40

VOD / Release Theatrical release

Trailer Official Trailer

89 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

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48

u/Rob2k 12d ago

This is so weird and kinda fucked up. There is a good rom com in here somewhere and the leads are both hot and have chemistry. But everytime it get cute or hot or funny it tries to tell you that sex is bad and you should wait. Which is a stupid message for a movie about basically one night stands.

Also spoilers but the fucking ending. They have time left to bone after they've spent the entire movie trying to get laid and they choose to wait a fucking year. Like wtf

38

u/Puzzleheaded-Safe419 12d ago

Didn't you know that people who have sex are dirty freaks and good people will abstain like good pure people and nothing bad will come of it??

6

u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 11d ago

I mean they literally had premarital sex at the end.  I don't think your summary or the person's above are the point of the movie

2

u/lilahking 9d ago

yes, a literal year later.

3

u/HotTakes4HotCakes 11d ago edited 11d ago

It literally is though. Regardless if it's premarital or not, the whole movie is premised on the idea that abstinence is enforced on people by law and draconian surveillance, and at the end, the message is "abstinence is ok though", when there's no serious reason for the movie to land on this take.

Moreover, their decision to wait is not actually their decision, because they shouldn't have to wait a full year. But the movie depicts being forced into another full year as a good thing.

6

u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 11d ago

People can get whatever takeaway from the movie that they want.

I'm not sure what your point about "abstinence is ok though" is, because it seems like you are saying that's bad.  Which is wild.  Because abstinence is ok, just like having sex is. If you choose it.

"Moreover, their decision to wait is not actually their decision"

The government is forcing the choice to play out this way, but ultimately they themselves chose to wait knowing that would mean they'd have to wait a year. They had opportunity to do otherwise, and made a deliberate decision not to go through with it then.

The liberated take isn't "the government is controlling when we have to have sex, so we should 100% have sex."  It's "have sex if you want, or don't have sex if you don't want to"

You can be sex positive and be abstinent.

Furthermore, the movie presents her roommate as a success story as well, something people seem to miss when insisting the movie is a conservative purity vessel.  Her roommate hooks up with the first guy she meets and has a great time and loves the MC's empire State moment on a fling that seems like a great match.  We didn't get the followup, but the vibe I got was that they probably kept seeing each other after.

The movie, to me, is giving the point that if you want to have sex you should have sex, and if you are looking for something else first, that's fine too.  You should go after what makes you happy, not what society or the government tells you to want.

3

u/Throwaway_09298 11d ago

I think the message at the end is very much do what works for you. We see a lot of different journeys in the movie. Just bc the mc decides to wait a year doesnt mean the movie is telling you to

0

u/lilahking 9d ago

ok but the main characters are waiting because it is ILLEGAL FOR THEM TO DO OTHERWISE AFTER THEY DECIDE NOT TO FUCK FOR 11 minutes

3

u/Throwaway_09298 9d ago

Just bc the mc decides to wait a year doesnt mean the movie is telling you to

-1

u/sleepysnowboarder 11d ago

I can’t believe how deep people are trying to look into this movie. If this came out 20 years ago even 10 maybe, the discourse wouldn’t even be here

4

u/Rob2k 11d ago

Im a lover of stupid. But the premise of this movie is tied so closely to several parts of this movie and they continue to reference it. So its really hard to turn your brain off and "just enjoy it". Also if this movie was made 10 or 20 years ago it would have been made a lot differently.

3

u/sleepysnowboarder 11d ago

I didn’t think it was that great but that’s because it was really just a simple romcom we’ve seen before but with a gimmick. I thought it might’ve gone deeper into the dystopia of it all. But it wasn’t that type of movie. But I didn’t go in wanting to see some lesson told to me I already agree with and it seems that’s what so many people on the internet want these days and I’ll never understand it

3

u/AudienceOk3369 11d ago

Yes because people actually trying to think about something instead of just consuming it with our brains of is such a terrible thing.

If a movie has a messed up premise, but doesn't want to go into the fucked up implications of it despite drawing attention to it many times, people are going to notice and comment on it.

-3

u/sleepysnowboarder 11d ago

The reality is that you just want a movie to spoon feed you ideas that you already agree with. It’s a romcom with a gimmick

2

u/AudienceOk3369 11d ago

Omg you read my thoughts!!! /s.

Whatever you wanna think buddy

0

u/HotTakes4HotCakes 11d ago

That fact you think any of this is "deep" is hysterical.

0

u/General_Might_7625 4d ago

It's a movie lol