One Night Only

A ridicuously silly premise manages to stay out of the way and let the glossy rom-com take over. Extremely attractive people with great chemistry, some genuinely funny situations and a touch of wit in the dialogue, a bunch of top actors in small parts, and some surprisingly sharp satire around the edges (watch for the posters and ads) make this more fun that you might expect. It helps that the movie itself does not take the premise too seriously.

According to the opening text, three years ago, Congress passed a law criminalizing sex between unmarried people except for just 12 hours on one day a year, non-procreative sex only. It’s known as the Mandate. How is this monitored and enforced? Red biomarkers on the wrists of unmarried people turn green only for the one permissible 12 hour period. No reason to think about this too hard except that people get to choose the symbol, like a tattoo, a tattle-tale biomarker that reports their activities to the authorities. Why this annual exception? Political compromise. In present day, it is just hours before the markers turn green and almost all of the young singles are extremely excited and focused, dressing to impress and, for those not in relationships, trying to find someone as quickly as possible. Condoms are sold out all across the city, a scarce few left are going for very high surge prices. Lubricant is being handed out on the street.

And so we meet the couple we will be rooting for and through many obstacles and wrong turns they will make on the way there. Owen (Callum Turner, holding his own as a romantic lead) owns a small pizza parlor and is looking forward to having sex for the third time with his live-in girlfriend (Maya Hawke). But she tells him she is planning to have sex with their neighbor instead. Allie (Monica Barbaro) is still hurting from the guy who had sex with her and then ghosted her the year before. She agrees to go to a bar with her friend, but the friend immediately abandons her to go off and have sex with someone she met in the line for the bathroom.

Allie and Owen keep running into each other as they keep trying to have sex with people that never happens for a variety of reasons, ranging from slapsticky to more slapsticky. You’ll have time to watch for some details on ads and signs that are funnier than anything in the story. But the travails of the two give them time to get to know one another and time for us to want to see them together. Barbaro (Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown”) shows an engaging warmth and a gift for comic timing. And some of the people they meet along the way are so game that they keep things going. The excellent supporting cast in even the smallest parts includes Mike Birbiglia, “SNL’s” Ben Marshall, Molly Ringwald(!) as Owen’s mother and LeVar Burton(!!) as her boyfriend, plus Ziwe, Este Haim (who provided the very fine music), Julia Fox, and King Princess.

Hey, it’s difficult these days to find a way to keep romantic couple we want to be together apart for the length of a movie, and this is no more artificial than, say, having one of them be a vampire. The movie has one wise choice — it doesn’t waste much time on the premise. And it has one advantage — some recent political developments may make that premise less outlandish than we thought. A lot of stuff we thought was impossible now seems more like…improbable. That considered, with some funny moments and an unexpectedly sweet conclusion, it’s very watchable.

Parents should know that this is a movie about sex and it is filled with sexual references and situations and brief nudity. Characters use strong and crude language and drink alcohol, there are references to drugs and comic mayhem that includes injuries and some visits to the ER.

Family discussion: What kinds of laws have governments made to put restrictions on sex? What rules should there be? Did Owen and Allie make the right choice as the exception hours were coming to an end?

If you like this, try: “The Broken Hearts Gallery”