Ladies First (2026)
Directed by: Thea Sharrock
Premise: A remake of the French film I Am Not an Easy Man. A male chauvinist executive (Sacha Baron Cohen) is transported to a world where women run society and he is regarded as a diversity hire.
What Works: Ladies First is about gender politics and the filmmakers stage scenes effectively, placing characters in the frame to suggest the power relationships between them. The great performance of Ladies First is given by Rosamund Pike. In the real world she plays an employee working under an executive played by Sacha Baron Cohen but in the alternate matriarchal world she is in the leadership role and he is in the subordinate position. Pike creates two distinct versions of this character and she’s funny and engaging in both worlds. As the boss, Pike carries herself with confidence and she’s deliciously mean.
What Doesn’t: Cohen’s character gradually falls for the matriarchal version of Pike’s character and upon returning to the real world he makes amends with the prime version of her character, with the implication they will live happily ever after. This doesn’t make sense. The version of this woman that Cohen’s character falls in love with is the mean, masculine-coded, and cutthroat executive. That’s a completely different person from the compassionate and creative character Pike plays in the real world. And that flaw is indicative of the incoherence that runs throughout this movie. Ladies First presents itself as a feminist satire but almost nothing in Ladies First is funny or witty or insightful. The main thrust of Ladies First is a man redefining his masculinity. As is often the case in these stories, a woman serves as the vehicle for his unconvincing transformation. The filmmakers ignore real and substantive social problems and instead flip familiar and obsolete patriarchal scenarios on their heads. In the matriarchal world of Ladies First, men invest in their appearance for female approval, men’s bodies are objectified to sell products, and men conceal their feelings to avoid being labeled “too emotional.” This is insipid and unimaginative. First, many of these scenarios are outdated. The filmmakers reference sexist beer commercials that went out of style thirty years ago. Second, the filmmakers divorce behavior from biology; what men and women perceive as sexually appealing are not interchangeable and are rooted in evolution. Simply swapping men and women’s place in society would not negate the biological dimensions of behavior and desire. Third, the film doesn’t imagine a matriarchal world run by female or feminine values. It just makes women behave like the worst version of men and men behave like the timidest version of women. And in that respect, Ladies First is, perhaps unintentionally, sexist against women. In its vision of a matriarchy, the men are subordinate but they act feminine. The men of the matriarchal world behave in feminine-coded ways, the implication being that femininity is a form of weakness.
Disc extras: Available on Netflix.
Bottom Line: Ladies First is nowhere near as clever as its filmmakers seem to believe. The film poses as hip and revolutionary but it’s stupid and unfunny. It’s absent of wit or insight and the love story is unconvincing.
Episode: #1102 (June 7, 2026)