Sacha Baron Cohen Drives Ladies First Cast in Netflix Comedy
Sacha Baron Cohen leads the ladies first cast in Netflix’s Ladies First, where Damien Sachs wakes up in a reversed world after bumping his head. says the broad comedy makes its gender-flip premise the whole engine, then runs 84 minutes while asking viewers to buy a very familiar joke again.
Damien Sachs and Alex
The review casts Cohen as Damien, a suave but sexist man about town who becomes a smaller cog at an advertising agency where he once held the top spot. Rosamund Pike plays Alex, who moves from patronised to powerful and climbs to the top of the corporate ladder.
That reversal is the film’s basic trick. Paul Smith becomes Pauline, Harry Potter becomes Harriet, and the world shifts so women are on top while men struggle to keep up. The setup lands in the same lane as other what-if comedies, including What Women Want, I Feel Pretty, Good Fortune and Isn’t It Romantic, but treats this version as a broad and chintzy new comedy rather than a fresh update.
Richard E Grant’s Hobo
Richard E Grant turns up as a magical pigeon-strewn hobo, one of the film’s stranger flourishes in a cast the review calls embarrassingly star-packed. Katie Silberman shares writing credit, but the criticism is that the movie keeps circling its single idea instead of building on it.
’s opening line is blunt: “A misogynist is made to learn the error of his ways in this painfully dated and embarrassingly star-packed sexism comedy.” It adds that Ladies First is a “one-joke premise stretched beyond its limits,” which is the real issue for anyone deciding whether the film deserves an 84-minute slot on a crowded streaming menu.
2000s British Echo
The review places Ladies First in a line of 2000s British comedies such as Sex Lives of the Potato Men, Three and Out, Fat Slags and Lesbian Vampire Killers, saying Netflix is reviving that style. It also keeps the workplace angle front and center: in this reversed world, women are still undervalued and underpaid, which gives the premise a real-world edge even if the film does not fully cash it.
For viewers, the practical read is simple: the film is short, heavily premised, and built around the pairing of Cohen and Pike. If you want a gender-swapped fantasy comedy, this one is designed to be consumed fast; if you want the idea to evolve past the setup, the review says it does not.
