'Ladies First': A flop with critics but a hit with Netflix audiences

Netflix comedy "Ladies First," starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike, has racked up around 31 million views worldwide in its first ten days on the platform, topping the global film charts despite damning reviews from critics.

In the film, the Borat and Ali G actor plays a misogynistic man who wakes up in a parallel world where women are in charge and behave like bros, machos and chauvinists.

Advertisements feature sexualized male bodies, and Cohen's character is constantly overlooked and sexually harassed by female bosses and colleagues.

The gender-swap comedy has become a major talking point among streaming audiences worldwide and has proved highly divisive. Yet viewers have not shunned the film despite its critical drubbing.

Between May 25 and May 31, it pulled in around 18.8 million views and ranked number one in Netflix's global film charts. In the three days from its launch on May 22 to May 24, it had already accumulated 11.9 million views.

The film is a remake of the 2018 French comedy "I Am Not an Easy Man" ("Je ne suis pas un homme facile"), starring Vincent Elbaz and Marie-Sophie Ferdane and also on Netflix.

In the English-language remake, Pike plays Alex, an employee suffocating under the ego of her boss, an archetypal chauvinist named Damien, played by Cohen. After Damien walks into a lamppost, he wakes up in a gender-reversed world.

Despite — or perhaps because of — its star-studded cast and the ever-relevant theme of gender equality, the film has drawn criticism from many quarters, with aggregator Rotten Tomatoes showing just 28% of reviews were favourable.

The Financial Times writes: "Sacha Baron Cohen is knocked unconscious early in Netflix comedy 'Ladies First', a film that only sometimes makes you wish the same for yourself."

The New York Times says the film's "easy feminism of winks and role reversals quickly wears thin," and that viewers are left with a film that, for all its superficial feminism, is ultimately all about a man and his personal development.

In Germany, the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes that "the film features a who's who of British theatre and film. But even they cannot save this botched film."

Le Parisien says the film feels rushed, with both predictable morals and outcome, while Variety says the film "relies on far too many ideas from the past."

"Ladies First" has been available to all paying Netflix subscribers since May 22. The romantic comedy was the number one film on Netflix in 42 countries in the last week of May.