Netflix releases Ladies First, a broad, chintzy comedy meant as a charming throwback to 2000s British humor. The film uses a high-concept scenario in which a sexist man wakes up in a world with flipped gender politics, where women are on top and men struggle. The premise is presented as magical and playful, but the result is excruciatingly unfunny and overly pleased with itself. The cast includes Rosamund Pike, who is well-cast but still trapped in a weak film, and Sacha Baron Cohen, whose performance is described as jarringly wrong and deeply uncomfortable. The movie is portrayed as a criminal waste of talent and a further misfire in a pattern of nostalgia-driven failures.
"Netflix has now decided to revive the dreadful British comedy of the 2000s. Films such as Sex Lives of the Potato Men, Three and Out, Fat Slags and Lesbian Vampire Killers saw creatives boldly stand up to Hollywood and declare that whatever they could do, the UK film industry could do it 10 times worse. The all-deciding algorithm has somehow deemed it necessary for a return to that cursed era with the release of Ladies First, a broad and chintzy new comedy that would have felt old hat even back then."
"It's an excruciatingly unfunny high-concept thought experiment, imagining a world with flipped gender politics, that's far too happy with itself and what it's allegedly achieving to be passed off as just some charming throwback. Like the other misfires it recalls, it's also a criminal waste of talent, a murderer's row of actors who hopefully got paid handsomely for the embarrassment of this whiffing up their IMDb pages."
"Chief among them is Rosamund Pike, an actor who gave one of the most scarily indelible performances of the 2010s in David Fincher's Gone Girl, deserving of far, far better than this. She's at least well-cast, something that can't be said for her co-star Sacha Baron Cohen, a jarringly odd fit as Damien Sachs, a suave but sexist man about town who learns the error of his ways."
"His doesn't have the initial swagger or then the softening charm, a flat, confused and deeply uncomfortable performance bringing a bad film down even further. The film's magical conceit sees Damien bump his head and wake up in a world reversed, women now on top and men struggling to keep up. Paul Smith is now Pauline, Harry Potter now Harriet, bras are for balls, Five Guys is Five Gals and Damien is now a sexually harassed and entirely underestimated"
Read at www.theguardian.com
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