Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike headline ladies first movie, Netflix’s broad new comedy about a misogynist who wakes up in a gender-reversed world. called it a revival of the dreadful British comedy of the 2000s, and the film’s 84-minute run time does little to disguise how much it leans on one premise.
Damien Sachs in reverse
Damien Sachs, Cohen’s suave but sexist man about town, bumps his head and lands in a world where women are on top and men are struggling to keep up. He becomes a sexually harassed and underestimated smaller cog at an advertising agency where he was once the top dog, while Pike’s Alex rises to the top as a put-upon single mother.
The review places the film’s purpose in plain terms: it takes the issue of women being undervalued and underpaid in the workplace and hammers home the same point repeatedly. That leaves the movie sounding less like a new joke and more like a recycled lesson.
Five Guys is Five Gals
said, “It’s an excruciatingly unfunny high-concept thought experiment.” It also described the film as “A misogynist is made to learn the error of his ways in this painfully dated and embarrassingly star-packed sexism comedy,” a line that cuts straight to the problem with trying to stretch one reversal across a full feature.
The comparison set is just as unfriendly. The review links Ladies First to What Women Want, I Feel Pretty, Good Fortune and Isn’t It Romantic, while noting that co-writer Katie Silberman also wrote Isn’t It Romantic and Don’t Worry Darling. That makes this feel less like a fresh reset than another pass through the same gender-swap formula.
Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant
Pike gets singled out as the film’s strongest presence, with the review calling her turn in Gone Girl one of the most scarily indelible performances of the 2010s. Richard E Grant appears as a magical pigeon-strewn hobo, but the cast can only do so much when the script keeps driving back to the same point about workplace sexism.
Netflix has put the film out as a broad comedy, yet the review’s verdict suggests the larger business problem is reach: a one-joke premise can announce itself fast, but it has to earn every minute after that. Ladies First does not; at 84 minutes, it still feels like it is running on repeat.
