good girls, bad movies 001: ladies first mistakes patriarchy in heels for matriarchy
i wanted to like ladies first more than i did.
that’s always the most annoying kind of movie disappointment. not the movie you knew was going to be bad from the trailer. not the movie you turned on just to have something playing in the background while you ate snacks and judged everyone’s choices. i mean the movie that has all the right ingredients and then somehow still comes out tasting weird.
rosamund pike? yes.
gender-swapped satire? listening.
a raunchy comedy about a sexist man waking up in a woman-dominated world? okay, fine, i’ll bite.
i first came across the movie through a clip online, specifically the boardroom scene, and it looked like it might actually have something sharp to say. the premise is simple: damien is an arrogant male executive who believes men have it harder than women. after an accident, he wakes up in an alternate world where women hold the power and men are the ones expected to be attractive, agreeable, sexually available, and professionally underestimated.
in theory, that should work.
there is plenty to satirize there. workplace sexism, beauty standards, sexual harassment, corporate power games, gendered double standards — the material is sitting right there. the movie does have a few funny moments too. watching damien realize that his body is now part of his professional résumé is one of the stronger parts of the film. suddenly he has to diet, work out, get waxed, flirt, smile, and make himself appealing if he wants to be taken seriously.
and listen. i am not above laughing at a man being humbled by a waxing appointment.
but after the joke lands, the movie starts to wobble.
my biggest issue with ladies first is that it does not actually imagine a matriarchal society. it imagines patriarchy with women sitting in the big chairs.
that is a very different thing.
the alternate world is not built on a new value system. it does not feel more communal, more balanced, more emotionally intelligent, or even more interesting. it is just the same old hierarchy with the genders swapped. women objectify men. women hold the power. men are belittled, sexualized, and pushed into decorative roles. the movie calls this matriarchy, but it feels more like masculine anxiety wearing a pencil skirt.
or, to put it more simply: this is not female power. this is patriarchy in heels.
the frustrating thing is that the movie almost understands what it is doing. the body image stuff works because women really are expected to perform beauty as part of basic social survival. be smart, but not intimidating. attractive, but not distracting. polished, but not vain. sexy, but not too sexy. professional, but still pleasing. the rules are endless and exhausting.
so when damien starts experiencing that pressure, the satire briefly gets teeth. for a second, the movie seems ready to say something real about how sexism turns the body into a workplace tool.
but then it keeps undercutting itself.
the CEO seduction scene is where the film really started to lose me. at first, it looks like the movie is trying to reverse the familiar workplace harassment dynamic: powerful boss, vulnerable employee, sex mixed with professional advancement. but that is not really what happens. the CEO does not seem especially interested in damien. she is not chasing him. she is not pressuring him. he is the one who decides to pursue her sexually because he thinks sleeping with her will help him get what he wants.
and that bothered me.
because in reality, women usually are not out here eagerly trying to sleep with their bosses as a fun little career strategy. the more common dynamic is that the person with power pursues, pressures, or exploits the person with less power. that is what makes workplace harassment so dangerous. it is not just about sex. it is about access, survival, advancement, and who gets punished for saying no.
but the movie frames damien’s choice like it belongs in the same category as the sexism women endure, and it does not quite fit. he is not being cornered. he is trying to use sex as a ladder.
that could have been interesting if the movie seemed aware of it. there is something to explore there: how people with less power sometimes feel pushed to use desirability as currency. but ladies first does not really sit with that complexity. instead, it turns the scene into another joke about how women in power would supposedly become sexually aggressive and predatory.
that is when the satire starts to feel less like commentary and more like projection.
the movie seems to ask, “what if women treated men the way men treat women?” but the answer it gives is not especially insightful. it mostly reveals what men think women would do if they had power. it assumes women would simply copy the worst behaviors of men: the entitlement, the objectification, the domination, the transactional sex. it does not imagine a different world. it just gives the same ugly world a better wardrobe.
and that is a shame, because the cast is not the problem.
rosamund pike is easily the best part of the film. she has the kind of presence that makes every scene feel sharper than it probably is on the page. charles dance is delightful because charles dance is almost always delightful. and the pigeon man is weird enough to be memorable in exactly the right way. he gives the film a little oddball goblin energy, and honestly, i respect that.
there are pieces here that work. the boardroom scene has bite. the makeover and body maintenance scenes have a point. some of the gender reversal jokes land. damien being forced to experience the world he dismissed does have a certain petty satisfaction to it.
but satisfaction is not the same thing as depth.
by the end, damien returns to his own world and decides to be a better man. he gives women more opportunities in the company, which is nice enough, i guess. character growth! we love to see a sexist man discover empathy after the universe personally inconveniences him.
but the ending feels too tidy for a movie with a premise this loaded. the real question is not whether damien can learn that sexism is bad. hopefully, yes, babe. gold star. the more interesting question is why the system rewarded him for being awful in the first place.
that is the essay the movie almost wrote.
instead, ladies first gives us a comedy about a man learning oppression is unpleasant once it finally happens to him. it has funny moments, a strong cast, and a premise with real potential, but it never fully escapes the worldview it is trying to mock.
it does not imagine matriarchy.
it imagines patriarchy with better tailoring.
