Spoiler
Not sure how this function works, but this does contain spoilers.
I had something else in mind for my first post after what I would describe as a long minute, but alas, life as we know it had other plans. So, instead, I’ll be writing a movie review, and this was more of a tedious task than I envisaged because I’ve more or less had to think at length about all the movies I’ve watched since the start of my little hiatus, and let’s just say it’s advisable to record stuff like this, books read and movies alike, just in case you ever need them. Like I’m needing them now.
Ladies First (2026)
This movie, directed by Thea Sharrock, and based on the 2018 movie I Am Not an Easy Man, explores the life of Damien Sachs (Sacha Baron Cohen), a very wealthy and chauvinistic man who works for an advertising agency, Atlas. After a client expresses disapproval of the absence of women in power, Damien lies that a woman was just promoted and hastens to make that lie a truth. This is where hardworking Alex Fox (Rosamund Pike) comes into play. She has been working at Atlas for 20 years without promotion as a result of her sex.
As you can guess, Alex is merely there for the optics and nothing else, and after a very distasteful treatment during a meeting, Alex quits, and everything changes when Damien, who hurls derogatory remarks behind her, walks smack into a pole and knocks himself out.
SPOILER ALERT!
Thoughts and Rating
I’m just going to dive headfirst into how utterly underwhelming this movie was. Not at the beginning, though. The beginning did look exceedingly promising, but then as it got closer to the end, things fell irredeemably flat. But let’s start with the few positives, shall we?
This production was indeed hilarious. For all its flaws, I can at least give it that. To a large extent, it was so humorous that I feared it would be overplayed. Thankfully, that did not entirely happen. I love the fact that when the switch to a matriarchal society, or more accurately, an inverted patriarchy, happened, it featured comical and witty reverses like “Burger Queen,” Lady of the Rings,” “Donna Quixote,” and even “Victor’s Secret.” The pope was even a Beatrice, and the prayer finishes were such a ghastly reverse, you’d cackle, or roll your eyes, or both.
I also loved how the screen players seemed to have so much fun reversing every patriarchal ill to exist most comically, but I will say that this marked the beginning of the things I found distasteful in this movie. Now, you’ll notice I used an inverted patriarchy or better put, patriarchy with the roles reversed, instead of a matriarchy. This is because I do not believe it was an accurate description of what a matriarchal world would look like, which would have at its core empathy, humaneness and justice.
What we witnessed in this alternate universe was still the morally decrepit society we have in reality. But perhaps this was the objective of the producers. For chauvinists, misogynists, and patriarchy-enablers to see, understand, and fully empathise with what women experience on a daily basis. To see how unjustly women are treated, and perhaps, change? I’d like to say that this objective shifted sorely towards the middle.
Powering then from what I believe was the objective, structuring the plot to attempt to make us root for Damien other than enjoying the punishments meted to an utterly vicious man, was vile. They defeated the very purpose of the movie by granting him some form of redemption, which was escape once he could regain his position. “Sleeping his way to the top” felt like a slap in the face to the millions of women who experience workplace harassment by implying that they actually do sleep their way to the top.
The ending was abysmal when the romantic twist was given to it. So, enemies to lovers? The oppressed falls in love with the oppressor? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of women’s autonomy and independence? That same belief that a woman’s life is incomplete without a man to make it better? And so, the man returns to his cozy, realistic world, and the women are stuck somewhere doing what? Waiting? Hoping?
I would add that for a movie like this, you’d want the target audience to be men, right? But the name choice and rom-com effect now serve to make it only appealing to the female demographic, and thus eroding the implied essence in its entirety.
I really wish that the emotions of people who truly are affected by things like these are not toyed with this grossly. But it’s all good, isn’t it?
A promising cast wasted on a distasteful story. 4/10.
Images from IMDB.
