The first reviews for One Night Only, a bizarre new romcom starring Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, are out – and the film has already proved fiercely divisive.

Directed by Easy A filmmaker Will Gluck, the film is set in a world in which the US has outlawed premarital sex for 364 days a year – leaving singletons just 12 hours annually to hook up.

It has been widely compared to the horror franchise The Purge, in which violent crimes are legalised for one day per year. Turner comes to the role amid talk that he’s leading the pack to become the next James Bond; Barbaro is best known for her Oscar-nominated performance as Joan Baez in the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Reviews, however, have been polarised, with some critics describing the message of the film as being “strangely conservative” and even “fascist”.

Awarding the film zero stars in a review for RogerEbert.com, Marya E Gates describes One Night Only as a “putrid, regressive film that thinks justifying embracing fascism is okay if it’s in the name of love”.

“If this is what it takes to get a romcom greenlit these days, maybe we should just let them die. Death with dignity is surely a better fate for the genre than fascist capitulation,” they add.

In __ The Guardian__, critic Benjamin Lee wrote that the film’s premise ought to be “the set-up for a grim

Handmaid’s Tale-adjacent horror of a totalitarian state insisting extreme control over the body, but instead it’s used as the backdrop for a sunny meet-cute, screams of protest drowned out by a zippy Top 40 soundtrack”.

“If it sounds like far too much for a breezy summer romp to take on, then that’s because it most definitely is, an overstuffed yet undercooked soufflé that can’t quite, ahem, rise to the occasion…”

Elsewhere, others have been kinder to the film, with several outlets singling out the chemistry between the two leads for particular praise.

“In Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, [the film’s] got two attractive, pleasingly grown-up leads whom you wouldn’t mind seeing get together; it’s set in New York City at its most invitingly balmy; it even has the odd one-liner that nets an actual laugh,” writes Variety’s Guy Lodge.

However, he adds, “it’s also saddled with a high concept so high as to neutralise all those considerable pluses, for once it’s introduced, not for a moment can you think about anything else.”

The dark and implausible fantasy at the heart of One Night Only’s premise has proved a major talking point (and source of mockery) ahead of the film’s release. The logistical challenges of enforcing a near-total “casual sex ban” have prompted rafts of questions from people who haven’t yet seen the film – and some who have.

In an interview that was widely shared on social media, Polygon’s Jake Kleinman sat down with Gluck to ask him detailed questions on the practicalities of the in-universe sex ban.

Explaining that the law was imposed following an act of congress (legislative, not sexual), the director speculates that the vote was “extremely close… I think it was about 50.01 to 49.9.”

Asked why people don’t just get married on a short-term whim in order to have sex, Gluck states that there is “signage” in the movie clarifying that newlyweds must wait one year and a day before getting divorced.

When it comes to the punishment US citizens face should they break the law, Gluck said: “My guess is, if you do it many times, there's probably fines involved, and then if you ultimately continue to do it, there’s probably some sort of jail sentence, I guess.

“We didn’t wanna get that far into it.”

Gluck’s previous film was 2023’s Anyone But You, a more traditional romcom starring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney. Despite tepid reviews, that film became a huge box office success, making $220m from a budget of just $25m.

Publicity for One Night Only has been goosed by Turner’s prominence in the 007 rumour mill – but whether it can replicate Anyone But You’s success remains to be seen.

One Night Only is out in cinemas from 28 August.