“Ladies First” makes some valid points, then proceeds to beat them to death. The film’s gender-swapped premise imagines a world where prejudice against men is as pervasive as prejudice against women is in ours, permeating everything from corporate boardrooms to family dynamics. Naked men are used to sell fast-food hamburgers from places like Burger Queen and Five Gals, and boys are taught to make themselves pretty and useful, while girls run free without consequences. There’s even a bit about Saudi Arabia finally giving men permission to drive, which one of the film’s female advertising executives notes over coffee with patronizing amusement.
At first glance, the reveal of each new aspect of this matriarchal society is funny, even incisive: for example, a funeral scene opens with a wide shot of a woman in priestly vestments leading the service. “Ah, yes, of course. God would be female in this scenario,” one might think, perhaps with a chuckle. Then the priest goes on to invoke “the Mother, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirit,” to which the mourners reply, “a-women.” This style of rule-of-three writing is also pervasive in “Ladies First,” and each repetition of each successive concept gets a little more tiresome until they become just plain obvious. None of it is unexpected, which limits how hilarious it can really be.
“Ladies First” is adapted from the 2018 French comedy “I Am Not an Easy Man,” which helps explain the film’s slightly odd and very horny approach. These are filtered through a screenplay with contributions from “Don’t Worry Darling” and “Booksmart” writer Katie Silberman, “Schmigadoon!” co-creator Cinco Paul, and Natalie Krinsky, writer and director of the high-concept rom-com “Broken Hearts Gallery,” all of whom add lots of quips and little depth. “Ladies First” is not a rom-com until it becomes one in its final stretch, one predictable development among many in this formulaic comedy.
The movie opens with another customary series of aspirational images, as playboy ad exec Damien Sachs (Sacha Baron Cohen) leaves one of his many conquests behind in his lavish hotel suite to go for a speedboat ride with Fred (Charles Dance), the firm’s CEO, who tells him that he wants Damien to take over as his successor. The world has been designed to make Damien’s life exceptionally easy, and it will continue to do so—at least, until he bonks his head on a pole outside of his office chasing Alex Fox (Rosamund Pike), the firm’s token female creative director, out of the building when she quits after overhearing some misogynist comments.
Now—horror of horrors!—Damien must live in a world where women rule, and men just can’t get ahead. He’s in the exact same place that Alex was back in our world, struggling to be taken seriously while fending off the sexual advances of CEO Felicity Chase (Fiona Shaw) and of Alex herself, who’s flipped into a hyper-confident, hard-drinking power broker. All of these are simple reversals, showing a lack of creativity in the writing of both the original film and its remake. Would a society that’s been ruled by women for thousands of years really adopt the same structures, attitudes, customs, and fashions as its male equivalent? Surely we could do better, in a screenwriting sense if not in a societal one. But imagining a feminist utopia is not the point of this film.
The point is for men to understand how patriarchy hurts women by imagining that they themselves are the ones being hurt—which, to be fair, is the best way to get a certain type of misogynist to consider women’s humanity. (See: the “I never realized until I had a daughter…” crowd.) This does require the audience to identify with Cohen’s character and feel at least a little sorry for him, which is difficult given how repellent a person he’s shown to be in the early stretches. It also presumes an audience of sexist men whose Netflix algorithms will never even show them this movie, let alone compel them to click on it.
So, who will encounter this movie as they scroll around looking for something to watch? Women, presumably, and “Ladies First” does offer some surface-level satisfaction for female viewers as both the unfairness of the current status quo (or, more accurately, the status quo of the mid-to-late 20th century) and the promise of a matriarchy (or, more accurately, an inverted patriarchy) are sketched out in broad strokes throughout the film. But these moments are no more gratifying than similar scenes in Sam Raimi’s “Send Help,” which was written and directed by men.
It all goes to show you how shallow this whole project really is: Okay, so men are pigs and the system is rigged. Now what? This film’s solution seems to be for men to be better, which is fair, if unlikely, according to its own rulebook for gender relations. Maybe back in the ‘80s this premise would have seemed fresh; at this point, it’s practically reactionary.
