{"id":598081,"date":"2026-05-22T13:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T13:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/598081\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T13:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T13:58:09","slug":"ladies-first-review-sacha-baron-cohen-and-rosamund-pike-do-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/598081\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ladies First’ Review: Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike Do Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAt a time when laws change daily to restrict women\u2019s bodily autonomy, protect men from accountability and reinstate antiquated values that benefit a few at the expense of the many, sexual politics can feel more regressive than ever. But as uneven a playing field as women may face against men in their lives, relationships and careers, \u201cLadies First<\/a>\u201d is a movie that seems like it\u2019s made less for this moment than one a few generations ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tStarring Sacha Baron Cohen<\/a> and Rosmund Pike, this Netflix<\/a> remake of \u00c9l\u00e9onore Pourriat\u2019s 2018 romcom \u201cI Am Not an Easy Man\u201d (the first French-language film ever commissioned by the streamer) follows a male chauvinist who awakens in a world where power dynamics between men and women are reversed. Yet even working from a script cowritten by Natalie Krinsky (\u201cThe Broken Hearts Gallery\u201d) and Katie Silberman (\u201cBooksmart\u201d) and directed by Thea Sharrock<\/a> (\u201cMe Before You,\u201d \u201cWicked Little Letters\u201d), the film\u2019s largely female creative team offers few insights about gender that weren\u2019t previously explored in \u201cMen Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,\u201d much less a dozen other switcheroo romantic comedies like \u201cWhat Women Want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCohen plays Damien Sachs, a lothario helpfully described upfront by the film\u2019s narrator, Pigeon Man (Richard E. Grant), as \u201can asshole.\u201d Though he\u2019s poised to become CEO at the Atlas advertising agency where his mentor Fred (Charles Dance) is set to retire, the shareholders believe the company\u2019s management is too top-heavy with men, and insist that a woman be considered for the role. Damien enlists his long-suffering assistant Ruby (Weruche Opia) to find a female employee \u2014 any employee \u2014 to join his ranks and alleviate claims of sexism, but when she selects the eminently qualified Alex (Pike), he makes it abundantly clear that she\u2019s there to facilitate progressive optics, not actually participate in running Atlas.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe soon quits, but as Damien chases her out of the building, he\u2019s so consumed by the opportunity to dress her down one last time that he knocks himself unconscious smashing into a pole. When he awakens, he discovers that women have replaced men (and vice versa) in virtually every societal role. Learning from Pigeon Man that he\u2019s been given an opportunity to learn an important life lesson, Damien returns to work, where Alex is set to become CEO, Atlas\u2019 former receptionist Felicity (Fiona Shaw) is currently CEO, and janitor Glenda (Kathryn Hunter) owns the entire company.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough initially humbled by a world where women run everything and men fight for recognition, Damien adapts uneasily to the power imbalance and decides to pursue the CEO role alongside Alex. What he soon discovers is that decades of entrenched control, now by women, is extremely difficult to reverse, and it feels quite demeaning to the men who support them, much less aspire to achieve at their same level. Facing off against a cutthroat competitor like Alex, Damien sees a lot of his former behavior from a new perspective \u2014 and he doesn\u2019t like it. But as the two of them grow closer, even in their enmity, he is unsure how to move forward without relinquishing some of the power he once felt entitled to.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLadies First\u201d offers some valuable lessons to men who take their spouses, female coworkers and other women in their lives for granted, but they do not seem likely to watch this film. It better serves its female audience with the escapist fantasy that they can treat others with disregard, indulge their basest impulses and still maintain control of their households, offices and social spaces. One of the film\u2019s most delicious scenes involves Shaw\u2019s Felicity, wearing a terrycloth robe that casually exposes her body, inviting Damien to her corporate penthouse for a bit of sexual quid pro quo. In another, she and Alex down highballs and feast on steak and burgers at a business dinner while Damien meekly orders a green salad.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe problem with a premise like this is that, among many other realities, female CEOs or titans of industry are no longer uncommon. Barry Levinson\u2019s \u201cDisclosure\u201d traded on the magic realism of cyberspace and the hyper-fantasy of a sexually harassing Demi Moore, but otherwise explores many of the same issues as this film, and it was released in 1994. The statute of limitations will never run out on stories about entitled jerks receiving a well-deserved comeuppance, but what would be more interesting in 2026 is a scenario in which one of these overprivileged CEOs watches his world dismantled after already realizing that his point of view is regressive.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, the most interesting read on \u201cLadies First\u201d is a metatextual one, where Cohen\u2019s most famous creation, the cheerfully chauvinistic Borat, gets emotionally vivisected by Pike\u2019s calculating \u201cGone Girl\u201d character, Amy Dunne. In Damien\u2019s \u201cman\u201d office, framed photos hang of Brigitte Bardot, and you\u2019d like to believe it\u2019s not just the late actress\u2019 sex symbol status but her deeply problematic views about women and minorities that earned her space on his walls. Meanwhile, the gag of ubiquitous gender-switched book titles (\u201cMonsieur Bovary,\u201d \u201cDonna Quixote\u201d) and brand names (Victor\u2019s Secret, Burger Queen) feels belabored, and a female-sung rendition of Radiohead\u2019s \u201cCreep\u201d feels too on-the-nose.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne supposes that casting the self-described \u201clanky, hairy\u201d Cohen as an inveterate lady killer only reinforces the film\u2019s send-up of men who unreasonably believe they\u2019re God\u2019s gift to women. But Sharrock\u2019s unwillingness to minimize Pike\u2019s beauty and versatility \u2014 even just in Damien\u2019s man\u2019s world \u2014 makes her too transparently impressive; compare Alex to Rachel McAdams\u2019 Linda Liddle in \u201cSend Help,\u201d who\u2019s not only dowdy and has bad skin but a personality that tests audience sympathies, and Pike\u2019s regal transformation in the women\u2019s world feels a bit like a missed opportunity. <\/p>\n

\n\tShaw and Hunter, meanwhile, seem to be having the time of their lives as the women with the most BDE in the room, and watching Dance sheepishly deliver a coffee to Alex as she patronizingly calls him her \u201ccashmere angel\u201d is a delight to behold after seasons of him wielding medieval authority on TV.<\/p>\n

\n\tDecades after \u201cWhat Women Want\u201d (much less Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan\u2019s men-versus-women sparring in \u201cWhen Harry Met Sally,\u201d and any number of other battle-of-the-sexes movies), are there still massive gender inequalities to combat? Of course. But is a female CEO as anachronistic a sight as a horse in a hospital? Definitely not as much this film would have you believe. Rather than stirring a debate, or even inspiring deeper cultural introspection, Sharrock and her collaborators deliver a trifle. For a satire about progress, \u201cLadies First\u201d relies on far too many ideas from the past \u2014 cinematic even more than cultural.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a time when laws change daily to restrict women\u2019s bodily autonomy, protect men from accountability and reinstate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,182540,2839,392,12976,12277,204265,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-598081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ladies-first","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-rosamund-pike","tag-sacha-baron-cohen","tag-thea-sharrock","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}