Updated

Updated · The Ringer · Aug 7

One Night Only Squanders 12-Hour Dystopian Sex Ban Premise in 1 Egregious Rom-Com Misfire

Updated

Updated · The Ringer · Aug 7

One Night Only Squanders 12-Hour Dystopian Sex Ban Premise in 1 Egregious Rom-Com Misfire

Q: How did a critically panned dystopian rom-com secure the first new song in thirty years from a legendary nineties band?

It appears to have happened less because *One Night Only* was critically embraced than because the project offered a rare soundtrack fit for Gregg Alexander and the newly reactivated New Radicals. The film’s music was one of the few elements critics consistently praised, and director Will Gluck has a track record of leaning heavily on pop songs to sell a rom-com’s mood. Universal’s soundtrack rollout made the New Radicals song a centerpiece: “One Night Only (Break Loose Break Free!)” is the title track on the film’s EP, alongside King Princess’ cover of “Love Is in the Air” and score material by Este Haim and Christopher Stracey. Just as important, New Radicals were no longer completely dormant. Alexander and Danielle Brisebois had already reunited in recent years for live performance and studio work, including rerecordings of songs Alexander had written for other artists and a recent collaboration with Michelle Branch. That made an original soundtrack commission more plausible than it would have been a decade ago. So the answer is mostly timing, industry relationships, and branding: a studio-backed rom-com with a retro-pop sensibility needed a signature song, and a newly revived 1990s band with strong name recognition had become available. The result was not an endorsement of the film’s quality so much as a promotional tie-in that gave *One Night Only* one of its only clear talking points: the first original New Radicals song in nearly three decades.

3 articles · Updated · The Ringer · Aug 7

Will Gluck’s new film is judged a near-total failure despite a hooky setup: a near-future America allows sex only during a 12-hour annual amnesty, sending two New Yorkers through an all-night romantic chase.
Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner earn the review’s few compliments, with their chemistry and pratfall-ready charm standing out even as the script turns a potentially sharp satire into what it calls a gap between intention and execution.
Real-brand product placement, surveillance chips, hookup apps and anti-mandate protest imagery suggest a critique of corporate control, religious politics and digital life, but the film is faulted for barely examining those ideas or its broader world.
Sex and rebellion are also said to be neutered: queer implications go unexplored, supposedly liberated characters remain conventional, and the ending retreats into monogamous passivity rather than delivering either raunchy comedy or incisive social commentary.
The review frames the movie as an extension of Gluck’s career-long tension between glossy rom-com nostalgia and bigger thematic ambitions, arguing that this time the mismatch produces one of his worst results.

Sources

The Ringer17d ago

"One Night Only" Movie Review: Gluck's Dystopian Rom-Com Slammed for Poor Execution

Los Angeles Times17d ago

One Night Only' review: Sex banned in dopey sci-fi rom-com - Los Angeles Times

Vulture17d ago

One Night Only' Should've Gone Full 'Starship Troopers'

Can electric chemistry and a killer retro soundtrack save a dystopian romance from its own shockingly underdeveloped script?

How did a critically panned dystopian rom-com secure the first new song in thirty years from a legendary nineties band?

While Hollywood imagines fictional surveillance, are invisible cyber attacks on our critical infrastructure the true dystopian nightmare we should fear?