Romantic Comedy | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

In an attempt to be new and different, the screenwriter for “One Night Only” (Travis Braun) decided to turn the idea for the horror/crime franchise “The Purge” (5 movies) into of all things – a Romantic Comedy, with this ridiculous logline: “On the one night each year when single Americans can legally have sex, a recently dumped man and a hopeless romantic woman search for love amid the chaos of New York City — discovering that the one thing they really want may be something neither of them is allowed to have.” From the beginning this idea about “one night a year, where people can legally have sex”, never worked, was never interesting or funny and was just a bad idea that never should have been greenlighted. This idea may have worked for the violent Purge movies, given the five films produced, but it will die on the vine after this attempt at a Romantic Comedy based on a bad premise.

One Night Only stars Monica Barbaro (Allie), who works as a singer for bad commercials, and Callum Turner (Owen), who owns a small pizza parlor in New York City. Both Allie and Owen are having major relationship problems, including during this one insane night where everybody tries to have legal sex within a 24-hour window of time. This story is all about mishaps with both Owen and Allie trying to find the right person in bars and clubs in New York and Brooklyn, with several scenes that anyone watching this ridiculous movie would realize “no sane person would ever do this”.

Owen lives with his mother, Linda, played by Molly Ringwald, who is living with her boyfriend, Turner, played by LeVar Burton. This will make anyone seeing this movie think, “Why did LeVar Burton and Molly Ringwald agree to act in this film?” Is it this difficult to find a good part in a new Hollywood movie? It must be, to convince bankable stars like Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner to act in this bad idea for a Romantic Comedy.

What could have rescued this bad idea might have been a well-written smart comedy to offset this dumb premise. Unfortunately, there is not nearly enough comedy to bring this movie over a 50% rating.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus of 49% is mostly correct, with my rating at 30% and a prediction that this one will be out of theaters in about two weeks.

The new film “You, Me & Tuscany” is what I would call a light romantic comedy, a mostly run-of-the-mill, forgettable two hours.

The upside of this mostly average story and movie are the locations and vistas of Tuscany, Italy, which has been the location of other movies in the past, the most memorable is the Diane Lane film “Under the Tuscan Sun”, released in 2003.

This story has been told many times before: two people, each carrying their own emotional baggage, find themselves in Tuscany under unexpected circumstances. In this case, the main character, Anna, played by Halle Bailey, finds herself in Tuscany, after a small fling with a man she meets at a restaurant, even though she has almost no money, and only because she saw that this man, she met Marco Calvani, is wealthy and his house in Tuscany is empty. Then Anna meets and is attracted to Marco’s brother Micheal, played by Regé-Jean Page, setting the stage for some insane drama at the end of this story.

The Rotten Tomatoes are a correct and predictable 69%, because there is nothing new here, just another run of the mill romatic comedy story. I agree with this rating and do not recommend this movie.