There is a particular kind of comedy that Hollywood has been making since at least the 1980s, in which a terrible person learns to be less terrible through the mechanism of magical humiliation. The genre has proved durable, if not exactly distinguished, and now it has come for the advertising industry — again.
"Ladies First," a new Netflix comedy directed by Thea Sharrock, stars Sacha Baron Cohen as Damien, an advertising executive whose misogyny is so cartoonish that he swaggers through his London agency to the strains of "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" (The song is one of several soundtrack selections that announce their intentions with all the subtlety of a Super Bowl spot.) When Damien treats a fellow executive, Alex, played by Rosamund Pike, with sufficient condescension to drive her from the company, he runs into a pole and wakes up in a world where women run everything and men are told not to get "too emotional" in meetings.
The film, adapted from a 2018 French comedy, proceeds to reverse every workplace cliché its screenwriters — Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul and Katie Silberman — could locate in the cultural filing cabinet. Female construction workers ogle Damien on the street. Book titles become "Harriet Potter" and "Donna Quixote." There is a Victor's Secret. (There is also a female Pope Beatrice, which seems like it might have warranted its own movie.)
Mr. Cohen, working here without the elaborate vocal disguises that have characterized much of his career, commits gamely to his character's humiliations. Ms. Pike appears to be enjoying herself thoroughly. The supporting cast — Charles Dance, Fiona Shaw, Richard E. Grant, Emily Mortimer, Kathryn Hunter — is almost absurdly overqualified, and they perform with the professionalism of people who have done Shakespeare and are now doing this.
The gags arrive at a pace brisk enough that some of them land. But the satire never cuts deeper than a print ad for gender equality, and long before Damien completes his inevitable moral renovation, the film has made its point several dozen times over.
One supposes there is still an audience for comedies in which men learn obvious lessons about women. Whether that audience will find the lessons any less obvious for having been delivered by such accomplished performers is, perhaps, a question for the marketing department.
Original story published in The Hollywood Reporter: "'Ladies First' Review: Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike in a Netflix Comedy That's High-Concept but Hopelessly Predictable"