‘One Night Only’ Makes Sex Boring — Negative Reviews Greet the ‘Sex Purge’ Rom-Com as Callum Turner’s Bond Hopes Takes a Hit

I recently attended a screening of “The Odyssey,” where one of the trailers shown was for “One Night Only,” dubbed the “sex purge” movie by some, starring Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro. The audience was openly mocking it after the trailer ended. Usually, that’s a bad sign for everyone involved, including Turner, who has been rumored as a contender to play the next Bond for quite some time.

So it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that “One Night Only” is a misfire, bombing with critics and destined for box office infamy. Full disclosure: I attended a preview screening of this one and kept dozing off, drifting in and out of the film. How boring must a movie be if it’s about sex? Apparently, very.

The reviews are predictably mediocre: a 40 on Metacritic and 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, which—what a coincidence—went down right after the review embargo lifted at noon. Universal Pictures, the studio behind “One Night Only,” and Rotten Tomatoes are sister companies under Comcast. Just throwin’ that out there.

So, what went wrong with this film?

“One Night Only” is essentially a rom-com version of “The Purge,” where premarital sex is outlawed except for one night each year. Yet it spends so much time justifying its “sex purge” concept that it forgets to be either genuinely romantic or particularly interested in sex, and what we’re left with is basically a sanitized, sitcom-like rom-com wrapped around a bizarre dystopian idea. What a muddled, oddly puritanical movie this turned out to be.

Then again, any film with Monica Barbaro is usually fine in my books. But despite the best of her abilities, she can’t save this movie, and Turner is absolutely wooden, lacking charisma. If the Bond producers watch “One Night Only,” they might start having some doubts.

Will Gluck is directing, and, save for “Easy A,” I’ve never really liked any of his films, which include “Friends With Benefits,” “Anyone But You,” “About Last Night,” “Annie,” and the two “Peter Rabbit” movies.