Official Trailer
Rating: 0/10 | Genre: Comedy | Runtime: 90 min
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Emily Mortimer, Charles Dance
I went into Ladies First expecting a pretty standard fish-out-of-water comedy, and that’s basically what I got. Sacha Baron Cohen plays this insufferable investment banker who treats women like conquests. He’s rich, he’s handsome, and he knows it. Then one day he wakes up in a world where women are in charge of everything. Men are the ones being objectified, dismissed, and treated like decorative accessories. It’s a setup that could work, honestly. The problem is the execution.
Cohen tries to coast on his usual schtick of playing obnoxious characters, but here he just comes across as annoying. There’s a difference between funny annoying and just annoying, and he lands on the wrong side. His character doesn’t really learn anything for the first hour, which means we’re just watching him be a jerk in a different world. The script doesn’t give him much to work with. His lines feel recycled from better movies.
The supporting cast is actually the movie’s strongest element. Rosamund Pike plays the female version of the main character’s world, and she brings actual charm to her scenes. Richard E. Grant is funny as a bitter stay-at-home husband. Emily Mortimer has some good moments too. But they’re all given so little to do. It feels like the movie didn’t know what to do with them besides have them stand around while Cohen’s character makes bad jokes.
The big problem is that the premise never goes anywhere interesting. If you’re going to do a gender reversal comedy, you need to have something to say about gender. This movie just has the gimmick. There are scenes that should be funny that land with a thud because the writing isn’t there. A scene where Cohen gets catcalled while walking down the street should work, but it’s filmed so flatly and the joke is explained so badly that it just dies.
The pacing is rough too. At ninety minutes this movie still felt long. There are stretches where nothing happens. The third act just meanders. There’s a climax that’s supposed to feel meaningful but you don’t really care what happens to these people by that point.
Charles Dance shows up for maybe five minutes, and honestly I think he took this paycheck and moved on with his life. I respect that. The whole movie has the feeling of people showing up to work, doing their job, and leaving. No one seems particularly invested in making this good.
Ladies First isn’t offensively bad. It’s just painfully mediocre. It’s the kind of movie you’d half-watch on a streaming service at two in the afternoon and forget about by dinner. Have you seen a comedy recently that actually had something to say, or are they all just coasting on premises these days?
Where to Watch
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