Netflix continues its fairly shameless content recycling with Ladies First, a British remake of 2018 French Netflix original I Am Not an Easy Man – and it seems like only a matter of time until an American version debuts without those pesky accents, perhaps starring, I dunno, Amy Adams and Ryan Reynolds? SOMEBODY TAKE A MEETING! Anyway, this gender-politics comedy stars Sacha Baron Cohen as a sexist pig who finds himself eating crow when he suddenly awakens in a matriarchal world. Rosamund Pike co-stars in this wacky, wannabe-satirical pseudo-rom-com that tends to feed us easy jokes instead of anything particularly insightful.
LADIES FIRST: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Red flag: A hobo with pigeons in his hair played by Richard E. Grant is the omniscient narrator of this story, speaking in voiceover when he isn’t on screen sharing the rules of this reality with the protagonist. Yes, oof. A big, major, cringey, let-me-italicize-it-for-emphasis oof. The credits call him Pigeon Man, and he introduces us to Damien Sachs (Cohen) as “an arsehole.” Damien is a higher-up at Atlas, an ad agency. He’s next in line to be CEO, thanks to being palsy-walsy with the owner Fred (Charles Dance). They habitually treat women like sex dolls and doormats. But they’re under public pressure to promote a woman to a leadership position, which would help them land a major account for a Specific Real-Life Highly Recognizable International Beer Brand That Shall Not Be Mentioned Here. So they openly and crassly scheme to give some broad a title and no power for the sake of “optics.”
And that would be Alex (Pike). Does Damien even remember her name? They meet at the foot of the escalator, and in an invocation of the title of the movie he lets her go ahead of him so he can ogle her bum while she cluelessly says, “I look forward to a position under you” and “I’m ready to do whatever you want.” They get to the Beer Brand meeting and there’s several men at the table and she’s also at the table but shoved to the back, and the only other females in the room are at the periphery taking notes. She can’t get a single sentence out without being interrupted and diminished. Fed up, she storms out of the office and Damien follows her out on the street to give her one last verbal jab and BOPPO, he slams head-first into a pole.
When Damien comes to, he realizes he lives in a reality where the women sit on the couch quaffing beer and watching the game while the men make dinner and set the table. He’s now an aging single man with a – gasp – cat for a pet. SO TRAGIC. Pigeon Man explains that Damien can only un-topsy-turvy his existence by fighting upstream against systemic sexism and landing the CEO position at Atlas, which is now owned by the cleaning lady who used to be the target of his condescension, Glenda (Kathryn Hunter). Former receptionist Felicity (Fiona Shaw) is the CEO, and Alex is the hotshot primed to replace her. Such irony, right?
I mean, this world is so screwed-up: The men in the office wear clothing to show off their pecs, bis and tris, and must undergo facial peels and pubic waxing in order to meet beauty standards. Damien ends up in a Victor’s Secret trying on testicle bras, and instead of eating at Burger Queen he chows on plain salad – he’s got to watch his figure, you know. He’s really got his work cut out for him in a world where everyone reads Harriet Potter and a female priest incants, “In the name of the mother, the daughter and the holy ghost, awomen.” Let’s just say she wasn’t the only person uttering prayers during this real fatherf—er of a movie.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? What Women Want is a springboard reference point here, and Sam Raimi’s recent Send Help was a far more entertaining and complex riff on workplace gender roles.
Performance Worth Watching: Wily and talented vets Hunter and Shaw steal a few scenes – and seem to be having fun with fairly undemanding supporting roles that aren’t required to carry the burden of this overwrought, underdeveloped concept.
Sex And Skin: A little sideboob; Cohen’s derriere.
Our Take: Boy, Ladies First has really “got us by the ovaries” here, hasn’t it? Is it bad taste to say the big, dumb, easy jokes it trots out are terminally flaccid? Is the film aware that it exists in the 21st century, when gender politics are far more complex than debates about who should wear aprons and toolbelts? The concept – banged about by a trio of screenwriters and director Thea Sharrock (Me Before You) – doesn’t endure much scrutiny when you consider how the film seems afraid to scuff up its female cast members too much. In a teensy role as Damien’s sister, Emily Mortimer lets rip a roaring fart, but Pike and the other women still wear lipstick and seem to undergo the usual beauty regimes. It just seems like not much thought went into rendering this idea truly satirical, funny or thematically astute. The core idea has a high ceiling, but everyone involved is on their tippy toes reaching and flailing, grasping at air.
The only indication of ambition here is via costume designer Lauren Reyhani, who smartly alters traditional menswear for maximum objectification and crafts women’s fashion, especially Pike’s, to project power – there’s more comedy in the cut of a dress shirt than in the writing or performances here. Otherwise, we’re stuck with dopey Monsieur Bovary jokes, magical-homeless-person cliches, characters that never transcend stereotypes and a soundtrack that thinks it’s clever when it subs female voices to sing Radiohead’s “Creep” and Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” The latter accompanies the scene in which Damien awakens in the Women’s World for the first time, shot with an inverted camera. Get it? Everything’s UPSIDE-DOWN! The moment is unfortunately emblematic of this movie’s broadstroked laziness.
Our Call: Ladies Worst. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
