In its relentless quest to revive every form of nostalgia, Netflix has now resurrected the dreadful British comedy of the 2000s with Ladies First, a broad and chintzy new film that would have felt old hat even back then. This excruciatingly unfunny high-concept thought experiment imagines a world with flipped gender politics, but it is far too pleased with itself to be passed off as a charming throwback. Like other misfires of that era, it is a criminal waste of talent, featuring a murderer's row of actors who hopefully were paid handsomely for the embarrassment of this film appearing on their IMDb pages.
A Misfire of Epic Proportions
Chief among the wasted talent is Rosamund Pike, who delivered one of the most scarily indelible performances of the 2010s in David Fincher's Gone Girl. Here, she deserves far better. At least she is well-cast, unlike her co-star Sacha Baron Cohen, who is a jarringly odd fit as Damien Sachs, a suave but sexist man about town who learns the error of his ways. Cohen lacks both the initial swagger and the softening charm, delivering a flat, confused, and deeply uncomfortable performance that brings the film down even further. For comparison, Mel Gibson was perfectly cast in the infinitely superior forefather What Women Want.
The Premise: One Joke Stretched Too Thin
The film's magical conceit sees Damien bump his head and wake up in a reversed world where women are on top and men struggle to keep up. Paul Smith becomes Pauline, Harry Potter becomes Harriet, bras are for balls, Five Guys becomes Five Gals, and Damien is now a sexually harassed, underestimated cog at the advertising agency where he was once top dog. Pike's put-upon single mother Alex has gone from patronised to powerful, swanning her way to the top of the corporate ladder. With help from Richard E. Grant's magical pigeon-strewn hobo, some humility, and a penile implant, Damien must take her on without the system on his side.
This premise sits alongside other fantastical "what if?" comedies like I Feel Pretty, Good Fortune, and Isn't It Romantic—the latter sharing a co-writer with Ladies First, Katie Silberman. Too often, these comic fantasies sound snappy in a pitch meeting but collapse when dragged onto the screen with a one-joke premise stretched beyond its limits and inconsistent world-building. Even at a barely-there 84-minute length, Ladies First is the worst example in recent memory, taking an undeniable real-world issue—women are still undervalued and underpaid in the workplace—and hammering home the same point ad nauseam without anything smart or sharp to add.
A Smugly Repetitive Waste of Time
Sexism is real, and misogyny persists, but by painting such a cartoonishly broad-strokes picture of both sexes and the office, the film becomes a smugly repetitive and utterly useless waste of everyone's time. With every pained joke—such as "fatherfucker" instead of "motherfucker," or "drama king" instead of "drama queen"—you can almost feel the film's three writers and director Thea Sharrock proudly looking over to see if we're laughing, ready to explain the film's very basic idea of humour if we're not. The script is more intent on clumsily pointing things out than actually having anything funny to say about it.
A Remake That Shouldn't Exist
Ladies First is a remake of a French comedy also owned by Netflix, which feels about as inventive a justification for being as the streamer launching Love Is Blind in a different country—reusing IP just because. For some masochists, there might be bizarro appeal in watching Kathryn Hunter drunkenly do the splits for a jeering nightclub audience, Emily Mortimer farting up a storm, or Fiona Shaw orgasming to death while Baron Cohen dances in assless chaps, promising to pump her "full of lead." But for a film so unashamedly silly, it is also incredibly, tiresomely un-fun, and by the end laughably earnest, as if we should all be learning a very important lesson. The only lesson here is about the heinous state of comedy films in 2026. No wonder everyone is so nostalgic.
