Netflix's New Movie Perpetuates Patriarchal Thinking

📆 5/22/2026 3:49 PM

Comedy News

Netflix, Comedy, Gender

📆5/22/2026 3:49 PM

📰screenrant

⏱293 sec. here / 215 min. at publisher

📊News: 852% · Publisher: 94%

The film follows a man who wakes up in a world where women are in charge and finds himself objectified and discriminated against. Despite the premise's potential for comedy, the movie ultimately reinforces patriarchal thinking.

When Barbie was a smash hit in the summer of 2023, I was among the cynics who believed that Hollywood was sure to take the wrong lessons from its success.

The rash of greenlight announcements for more movie adaptations of toys had me believing I was right. But Ladies First is a kind of post-Barbie mistake I didn't anticipate. While other execs turned to Hot Wheels and Polly Pocket, someone's takeaway after seeing the Kens' takeover of Barbieland was that the people hunger for more feminism-for-beginners gender comedies.

Netflix's new movie is no shoddy disaster – it's a competently, if unexceptionally, mounted production by director Thea Sharrock, featuring an impressive British and Irish cast. It's not entirely without laughs, either. But this story of a chauvinist who bumps his head and wakes up in a world where women are in charge is so fundamentally misguided that I at times could not believe I was actually watching it.

A comedy sketch premise stretched to feature length, the team behind Ladies First should have spent a little less time on thinking up gender-flipped jokes and more time wondering whether they actually had a coherent story worth telling. Ladies First Wastes Its Considerable Talent On Bankrupt Storytelling When the film begins, Damien Sachs is a man in his element.

A high-level executive at the Atlas ad agency, he's next in line to succeed in Fred as CEO, and everyone knows it. He's wealthy, powerful, and unmarried, enjoying unattached flings with younger women left and right. In other words, he doesn't really have to care about anyone. So, when he needs to promote Atlas' first and only female creative director to save a contract with Guinness, he does it carelessly.

He has his secretary Ruby compile a list of names, then accepts the first one she says aloud. As it turns out, he accidentally chose well. Alex Fox has worked at Atlas for twenty years, and rebuilt her career after taking some time to raise her child. She's grateful and excited.

She has ideas. But her first day in the new role is quite bad. Before it even ends, Damien has told her to her face that she was only ever hired for the optics and won't really be contributing to the campaign. Furious and in tears, she quits.

Damien hounds her all the way out of the building – then smacks into a pole, falls, and hits the back of his head on the pavement. Things are different when he wakes up. Well, sort of different. This new world he finds himself in is the same unfair place it always was, except that the gender dynamics have been reversed.

Women now have the full benefits of society's biases, and men are the gentler sex. Female cops, cabbies, and construction workers objectify male passersby. Men's naked bodies are plastered all over advertisements. The"Queendom of Saudi Arabia" has only just made it legal for men to drive.

And Damien, who now lives alone with a cat, is the token male director at work. Ladies First ends up perpetuating the patriarchal thinking it purports to upend. I will admit, there are aspects of this mirror-world that suggest this premise had some comedic promise.

I chuckled at"Burger Queen" and"Five Gals," the stack of men's magazines, literary classics"The Lady of the Rings" and"Donna Quixote," and the other small changes that do the job of highlighting how pervasive patriarchal language really is. The new dynamics manifest in the actors' physicalities in interesting ways, and it's obvious what attracted this roster of talent to these roles.

Fiona Shaw and Kathryn Hunter, who inevitably better whatever they're in, have fun with their respective transitions from meek office secretary and cleaning lady to sleazy CEO and Chairwoman, respectively. However, the issues with Ladies First are fundamental. Despite being framed by the opening voiceover as an opportunity to see an entitled man get his just deserts, the movie is actually structured in a way that asks us to root for his success.

To return home, Damien must somehow end up in charge of Atlas in this new world, despite the deck being stacked against him. He endures many of the double-standards that women face in the workplace, ostensibly with the goal of making him more empathetic to the struggle of people like Alex back in"reality.

" But that's not really what happens. Subscribe to the newsletter for sharper film insight Want more candid cultural criticism? Subscribing to the newsletter delivers clear, contextual film analysis and thoughtful takes on gender in movies, helping readers unpack what mainstream comedies are really saying. Get Updates By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

You can unsubscribe anytime. Ironically, in structuring this story around a male protagonist, Ladies First ends up perpetuating the patriarchal thinking it purports to upend. The only real problem with trying to sleep your way to the top is that it doesn't really work. Sexual harassment in the workplace is more irritating than sinister, and arguably less so than the subsequent lawsuits.

Damien's behaviors while in power are valorized as what it takes to get ahead, to the extent that, somehow, his greatest moment of moral awakening essentially comes from learning to love and admire himself. Who could possibly be the target audience for this? The best version of this story is probably something like a Twilight Zone episode, but this Netflix comedy is far too timid to give a man like Damien what he really deserves.

It's a shame that so much creative talent was wasted on such an insulting, fraudulent film. 3/10 Ladies First 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed R Comedy Release Date May 22, 2026 Runtime 90 minutes Director Thea Sharrock Writers Cinco Paul, Katie Silberman, Natalie Krinsky Producers Liza Chasin, Eleonore Dailly Cast

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