Leave it to the studio that made The Purge series to allow director Will Gluck (Easy A, Anyone But You) and writer Travis Braun to craft a romantic comedy about the rise of a fascist political regime in the United States that bans all forms of sexual intercourse outside of wedlock every day of the year save one. But that’s exactly the central conceit driving One Night Only, a New York City romp about two strangers, Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner), who keep running into one another over a 12-hour period during which all they want to do is get laid.

The opening third overflows in not-so-subtle jabs at religious extremism, conservative hypocrisy, and American society’s idiotic ability to vote against its own self-interest time and time again. It’s rare to see such brazen, in-your-face political commentary in an otherwise rudimentary, R-rated major Hollywood sex comedy. But Gluck and Braun seem excited to insert it into their story whenever they can. Better yet, the studio, Universal Pictures, seems content to let them do it.

How successful this type of social observation is is worthy of broader debate. Personally, I think Gluck and company talk a solid game for roughly 30 minutes, maybe 40, and then proceed to play lip service to the whole concept of religious conservatism taking control of the federal government, Handmaid’s Tale-style. Instead, they keep their focus squarely on Allie and Owen desperately trying to have sex, whose growing frustration over failing to do so only increases their deeper emotional attraction.

On the plus side, the main throughline chronicling Allie and Owen’s interactions is awfully enjoyable. Barbaro and Turner have terrific chemistry, and their characters are far more interesting than it looked like they’d be early on. Allie is a professional singer who specializes in commercial jingles (her latest being a clever but terrible riff on Sara Bareilles’s “Brave” for a pharmaceutical company). Owen is the gregarious owner of a popular pizzeria who gets blindsided when his longtime girlfriend (Maya Hawke, in an amusing cameo) states she thinks they should use the annual holiday to play the field.

While neither character is all that unique as far as typical rom-coms go, Braun’s script goes out of its way to make them believable and ground each in tactile, everyday reality. While the world they inhabit is glossy in a celluloid fantasy way, Allie and Owen still exist as two amiable normies. This makes it a lot easier to relate to — and accept — much of the absurd stuff that happens to them seemingly every other minute or two.

Pity, then, that Gluck isn’t entirely successful in keeping things interesting start to finish. The first half works decidedly better than the second: The cultural observations are more astute. The world dynamics are intriguing. Having two people basically in an After Hours meets Into the Night scenario — only with a lot of heavy petting happening all around (but not to) them — is ridiculous fun. I enjoyed all of that quite a bit.

At a certain point, though, it’s as if Gluck gets scared by the risqué setting and substantially dials things back. Events, even as they accelerate toward a predictable (please excuse the pun) climax, become increasingly chaste. It’s almost as if the film shifts gears to accept the puritanical premise as appropriate. While I know that’s not the case or intent, the sensation does unintentionally linger, and this blunts the otherwise strong connection between Allie and Owen that develops over the course of their bizarre, surreal night of carnal craving.

Be this as it may, I did still have a good time. I loved how progressive the depictions of romantic and sexual lust and longing were (the core romance may be heterosexual, but that doesn’t stop Gluck from filling the screen with as many jubilant images of Queer canoodling as he can get away with), and it’s been a while since any motion picture had me laughing as suddenly and unexpectedly as this. Additionally, Barbaro is outstanding, giving a bold, bright, three-dimensional performance of physical and verbal dexterity that’s sublime. The talented actor confirms that her A Complete Unknown Academy Award nomination was hardly a fluke.

Could One Night Only be better? Absolutely. The goofily dexterous foreplay is certainly better than the subsequent amorous payoff. Still — and this is in large part thanks entirely to Barbaro’s mesmeric talents — in classic New York rom-com fashion, I’m tempted to state that I’d like to have more of what Allie is having.