This review may contain spoilers.
The short and sweet and unoriginal take on this is that it's basically a rom-com version of The Purge. The premise is that a few years back the government outlawed premarital sex, and now there's one twelve-hour window a year when unmarried people can have sex with whoever they want. So it's The Purge, except you don't get to break every law. You get to break the law about screwing each other. That's the movie. There's been some kind of authoritarian shift in America. Everybody's tagged with tracking tech that tells the government when they're performing sexually, so the government can step in if you're having premarital sex or having sex without a condom or doing anything else this society doesn't allow. Unprotected premarital sex is still off the table all three hundred sixty-five days. The movie doesn't spend much time on how we got here. It tells you in title cards in the first few seconds and then moves on. It mostly wants to get you to the fun part of the premise. You've got one night. What would you do? Would you spend it with the person you're already with? Would you go out and screw around? Would you try to find somebody? Could you actually meet the one on what the movie calls the least romantic night of the year? That's what it's interested in. It's a big party night, the whole city is out trying to make something of their one shot, and Will Gluck plays it as a New York City summer romp. Callum Turner is Owen, who runs a pizza shop and was planning to propose to his girlfriend Malika until she told him she'd rather spend her night with somebody new and then sent him out with her blessing to do the same. Monica Barbaro is Allie, a jingle singer who's already single and wants the real thing rather than an annual appointment. So the two of them spend the night bouncing into and out of each other's lives, and the question is the same one romantic comedies have always asked. Will they or won't they? Despite how sexual that premise sounds, this really is just a straightforward romantic comedy. The movie itself isn't particularly lewd. It's not The Purge with an orgy instead of murder. It's two attractive people moving around New York while the movie asks whether they should end up together. A lot of people are going to get hung up on the premise. Would Americans really let the government outlaw premarital sex, tag everybody with monitoring tech, and then mostly go along with it? I tend to think people accept a surprising amount of what their government tells them to accept once it becomes normal, and even I think this is a stretch. But whatever. I can accept a premise for the sake of a movie. That part I can get past. My problem is the romance. I never understood why these two characters should find each other charming or why I should want them together beyond the obvious fact that they're both extremely attractive people. Monica Barbaro is beautiful. Callum Turner is a handsome guy. They keep running into each other. Apparently that means they should have sex and/or fall in love. Okay. But why these two people? That's where the movie never sold me. And I've seen much worse movies pull this off. Hallmark and Lifetime pump out romantic movies constantly that aren't any good in the abstract, but they understand the whole thing collapses if you can't convince the audience these two people belong together. You can have a ridiculous setup. You can have mediocre writing. If the chemistry works and you build the characters toward each other correctly, the romance still lands. I don't think it landed here. Which is frustrating, because this movie should be directly in my wheelhouse. The Purge is one of my favorite franchises. I've liked every single movie in that cycle. I also like romantic comedies. I don't know how many people are out there saying they love The Purge and also love a good rom-com, but apparently I'm one of them. This movie was made for me. If they'd gotten the romance right, they would have had me. I still enjoyed it. The premise is worth watching play out and I thought it was a solid effort. I saw this one by myself on a free afternoon, and I'm trying to organize an event so I can see it again with friends next week, so obviously I didn't dislike it. It just didn't work in the one place a romantic comedy absolutely has to work.