Review: Ladies First (2026)

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Thea Sharrock’s Ladies First is amusing, repetitive, stupid. It’s a Netflix Original Film, after all, which in 2026 means that it resembles movies of the 1980s and 1990s in some ways (it’s a blend of high-concept comedy with workplace romcom) but not in others (it’s flatly shot and thematically redundant in that way unique to steaming entertainment). That said, it’s short (only 93 minutes), stars two good actors (Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike), and has some decent jokes. Or rather, it has a decent joke (singular). It imagines what the world would be like if women acted like men and men were treated like women, and plays this joke over and over again to diminished returns.

In the film, Sacha Baron Cohen’s misogynistic marketing agency director, Damien, hits his head and wakes up in a world where women are on top. In this alternate world, he’s treated the way he has typically treated women in the normal world, such as his colleague Alex Fox (Rosamund Pike). Damien must learn to rise within this matriarchal system lest he never return to the real world.

The writers, Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul, and Katie Silberman, working off a French film from 2018, are not rigorous with this thought experiment. For instance, the film doesn’t reimagine a world where feminine values are dominant, nor does it add any nuance to its portraits of masculinity and femininity. Rather, it simply makes all the women in this world act like chauvinistic men, and all the men act like pliant women.

Sounds like a plot from the 1980s, maybe even the 1950s—no surprise it’s based on French source material—and so its gender politics are dated if measured against our contemporary moment. But a film like this, even if it’s written and directed by women, has little interest in politics beyond the gag. At least the gag is funny.

If the film’s old fashioned politics seem borrowed from French culture, its approach to humour is entirely British, and there is nothing the British love more in comedy than the goof of a man dressed up as a woman. Thus, the whole film is something of a drag performance. No, the men don’t wear dresses in this world, but they do get their nails done, wear makeup, eat salads to watch their weight, and dress sexy for their female bosses. And in the reverse, the women are slobbish and slovenly if they’re poor, cravenly crass if they’re rich.

The initial scenes of Damien experiencing this shock are dumb, but effective as gags. We see sexualized advertisements with barely-clothed men all over London. We see how brands have adjusted in this new world—Burger Queen, Victor’s Secret. We also get crass slapstick or sight gags that would be at home in Borat, such as when Damien goes to visit his mom and sister, only to be shocked to see them in jumpsuits on the couch, drinking beer, watching sports, and scratching their crotches.

This one note joke reaches its zenith when Damien realizes he can rise the ranks at work by seducing his bosses, including Fiona Shaw’s senior director, Felicity. She invites him back to her penthouse for after hours work. You know what you’re in for, but that still doesn’t prepare you for the sight gag of Fiona Shaw draped in a loosely fit terry cloth robe with nothing on underneath, bullying Damien into putting on a cowboy outfit for her amusement while she gets off. Damien’s dressup gets her so excited that she ends up dropping dead, showing that his entire seduction plan was for naught. I wasn’t expecting to laugh at gender-flipped sexual harassment jokes and sex corpse gags, but you take what you can get in 2026. I’m not against laughing at dumb stuff.

Sadly, the well runs dry on the gender-flipped joke shortly after this scene and the plot kicks in, running through the tired conventions of the reformed man routine as Damien bonds with Rosamund Pike’s Alex and learns that maybe he can be a successful man without treating women like garbage. The lessons learned are rote, but that’s to be expected in a movie like this. It doesn’t help that the internal logic of this thought experiment breaks down as it has to jerryrig a way to get Damien back to the real world so he can demonstrate he’s learned his lesson. Furthermore, the whole thing is shot in that overly bright, flatly composed Netflix house style that recalls Hallmark more than Hollywood of the 1990s.

I don’t begrudge a movie that makes me laugh, and Ladies First made me laugh. But in the heyday of stupid comedy back in the 1980s and 1990s, you’d get a modicum of craft and a touch of storytelling prowess, alongside the shenanigans. Now, you just get the gag, and have to be grateful if there’s a laugh to be had.

4 out of 10

Ladies First (2026, USA)

Directed by Thea Sharrock; written by Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul, and Katie Silberman, based on I Am Not an Easy Man by Éléonore Pourriat; starring Sacha Baron Cohen, Rosamund Pike, Charles Dance, Emily Mortimer, Tom Davis, Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw.

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