by John Tillyard, Contributing Writer
Damien Sachs (Sacha Baron Cohen) is an arrogant male chauvinist executive at an advertising company. He hires Alex Fox (Rosamund Pike) to his brainstorming team, only to make it appear his company is inclusive. After Alex quits, Damien hits his head on a pole and wakes up in an alternate universe where traditional gender roles are reversed. Now, in a much lower position at the company, Damien must find a way to land the CEO role while navigating the more difficult realities men face in this universe’s workplace.
The first thing that throws you off in Ladies First is how the premise is quite outdated. While life in the working world is still harder for women, it is nowhere near as weighted towards men as is depicted in this movie. It feels like a screenplay that sat on a shelf in Hollywood for about 30 years before Netflix gave it the greenlight, because that’s what Netflix does. The way the men act in this story, and to a lesser extent, the women in the alternate universe, is not the sort of behavior that would fly in any working environment in this day and age. So, the whole idea gets off on the wrong foot because it derives from a society that no longer exists. The message this film is trying to tell has been told and understood many times over the last 20 years. Obviously, it is still a problem; women are still not treated equally and are still often not considered for the highest positions in companies. Inequality is still a real problem; however, there is nothing modern about the way it’s portrayed here. The mistreatment of women is massively exaggerated, and the whole film acts like this is the first time this has ever been pointed out. It addresses the need for equality like a film from the 80’s. There is no nuance; the film says, “women shouldn’t be treated this way” and leaves it at that.
With that said, there is still potential for this to be enjoyable if the story is interesting and the comedy lands. The problem is that Damien is deliberately set up in the opening ten minutes as an awful human being; nothing about his character makes you want to see him succeed. When he finds himself having a much more difficult time in the alternate universe, you aren’t thinking “how’s he going to get out of this”, you are just thinking “good, he deserves this.” Alex is portrayed as a much more sympathetic character, so the idea may be that, when Damien returns to the real world, he will improve her life. Alex still doesn’t come across as a particularly likeable character, though. Her alternate universe counterpart is just as much of a chauvinist as Damien, and therefore, for the majority of the runtime, there is no one on-screen that you want to root for to succeed.
The comedy centers around gender stereotypes being reversed. Men are played up as sex symbols, and women have the more powerful roles in everything. The gags all stem from the idea that the men are acting like women and vice versa. These gags are somewhat interesting at first, men making the effort to look good, women gawking at young men and so forth. After about ten minutes of these types of gags, the novelty wears off; there needs to be something more creative about it, and there isn’t for the most part. There are also title changes to well-known brands, which get old really quickly. I found it curious that one of these is Harry Potter (now Harriet Potter), given the gender-related controversy surrounding the author of those books. Most jokes center in some way on the switching of gender roles in the hope that the idea of that, by itself, is funny. The only gag that had something more interesting to it that went beyond the cliché was the idea that the image of a man’s testicles is the equivalent of cleavage in this universe. Honestly, how can this have been directed by Thea Sharrock, the same director as the brilliantly funny Wicked Little Letters?
It’s a real shame to see Baron Cohen in something this uninspired and unfunny, since he has proven in the past that he is a masterful comedic actor. He doesn’t offer much of a performance here, but I feel that is largely because he is miscast. His character is a mix of the standard jerk and straight man, and Baron Cohen has never really been known for that kind of role. Rosamund Pike, best known for her stirringly scary performance in Gone Girl, plays a dual role as Alex across both universes. She fits much better into this role than Baron Cohen, giving off a slightly bumbling vibe but still confident enough to speak her mind, and then completely confident but also flawed when we meet her in the alternate universe. Charles Dance, Fiona Shaw and Richard E. Grant are all here as well in smaller roles, and despite having little to work with, all do as good a job as could have been expected. Grant’s role is somewhat fun as he plays a sort of guardian angel. Shaw has a few funny moments, but Dance feels very wasted in a largely pointless role.
All in all, Ladies First tries to give an important message in an outdated way. There was potential for an interesting idea, with a world where typical gender roles are flipped. But without much to say beyond a surface-level message and very few creative gags about traditional gender roles, it comes across as a bit dull. The story never feels compelling and drags at times, despite its modest 90-minute runtime. A cast with quite a lot of big names is criminally underutilized, and it’s sad to see them forced to work off such a poor script. If this film was trying to make women feel empowered, the only way it manages that is by empowering them to turn it off.
Rating: Didn’t Like It
Ladies First is currently available to stream on Netflix
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