Joel on Film

There’s a clever idea at the center of director Thea Sharrock’s Ladies First, in which a man’s-man of a man bumps his head and finds himself in an alternate reality dominated by femininity. This isn’t simply a world dominated by women, by the way, hence the broader gendered term: The movie imagines that the basic power dynamic between male and female has been swapped, yes, but it goes deeper than even that, as our hero discovers when returns home to find a few novels on his coffee table. If everything he’s just experienced as his reconfigured workplace wasn’t enough of a hint, perhaps the adventures of Harriet Potter, Donna Quixote and the Lady of the Rings can reiterate it?

Maybe there’s a clever idea here, then, but Sharrock and a trio of screenwriters (Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul and Katie Silberman), adapting an earlier screenplay by Eleonore Pourriat, have failed to explore it in any meaningful sense by way of this silly and gimmicky brand of karmic comedy. Not to be outdone, the film also builds toward a mushy, moralizing climax of the kind that usually undermines a comedic premise as, again admittedly, clever as this one. Maybe that was always going to be the case, though, since, after all, the main character here has a lesson he rather desperately needs to learn about himself, about women and about the way the world around him works.

Another strength of the movie is undoubtedly the ensemble, with intelligent and gifted actors smartly cast and doing their very best to service this material with dignity. Sacha Baron Cohen is Damien, a true hole in the posterior if you get the drift, who is every tired idea of a chauvinist and a misogynist all wrapped up in one body. Rosamund Pike is Alex, lower on the totem pole at Damien’s wine company on account of her womanhood, but luckily positioned to be chosen at random for a promotion by Damien when the culture at large catches up to the company and the need for a major promotion of a female executive is needed.

Right off the bat, the movie tells us it’s really only going for the broadest of ideas here when Damien and Alex first meet, because he believes her corporate language about readiness for new opportunities is come-on talk for a potential hook-up later. When he realizes who she actually is, he barely listens to any of her ideas, castigates her for being emotional when she tries to speak up and only implements his own ideas after all that effort. Yes, Damien is a real piece of work, and so, when he hits his head really hard on a traffic light pole, we’re put in our own position of rooting for the brain damage.

After all, that’s what follows: a traumatic brain injury that launches Damien into an alternate reality. He is no longer in charge of his company; Alex has his office. The cleaning lady is no longer at the bottom of the totem pole; Glinda (Kathryn Hunter) is president of the board. The receptionist is no longer taking calls; Felicity (Fiona Shaw) is making them, sometimes for the price of a sexual favor.

All the men, meanwhile, are less competitive, more prone to emotions and sensitivity and, well, everything else Damien might have thought women were before the bump to his head. That also means the general structure of corporate competitiveness is also different, except in the ways it’s entirely the same, as Damien is now forced to move up the ranks (with the help of a homeless man, played by Richard E. Grant, who has been stuck in a similar situation for almost a decade, but in a way that makes no sense) and Alex maintains her privilege while in the same breath bleating feebly about how hard it actually is for her. Around and around this all goes, until the climax must inevitably return Damien to his reality.

It’s mostly an excuse for Sharrock to give us a bunch of references, either to pop culture or to other inherent attributes of wider society, and flip them on their heads to reflect the new reality. These are sometimes funny, sometimes not and, ultimately, reflective of a comedy that constantly feels like it’s patronizing the viewer. That’s not a great feeling to have throughout an absurdist narrative with an actually salient point to make, buried beneath a lot of artifice and foolishness.

As for whether Damien learns his lesson, well, it’s a bit complicated, because the movie’s feathery score and slightly jumbled soundtrack seem specifically curated to convince us that he has. The number of ways in which Ladies First undermines its own pretty good idea, though, suggests that this is simply the jarring move into sincerity a certain algorithmic approach requires of its broad and silly comedies, because we’re not quite as convinced as the filmmakers think we should be.

Rating: ** (out of ****)