Ladies First has been panned. It’s still an essential watch | Anna Smith
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Ladies First — Netflix comedy directed by Thea Sharrock, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a male chauvinist who wakes up in a world run by women, with Rosamund Pike and Fiona Shaw; flips gender dynamics to expose double standards (e.g., Victoria's Secret becomes Victor's Secret, men are talked over in meetings).
- Rotten Tomatoes split — 26% critics score against a 64% audience "popcornometer" score, revealing a wide gap between professional pans and viewer response.
- Anna Smith, host of the Girls on Film podcast, argues the film's mainstream accessibility gives it power to make female audiences feel seen and to help men empathize — a reach more "nuanced feminist takes" cannot match despite her own critical issues with cringeworthy scenes and a binary, heteronormative world.
- Farah Benis, founder of the Centre for Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls, called the film "deeply disappointing" and "muddled," but said dismissing the workplace harassment it depicts reinforces "one of the biggest barriers women continue to face" — the disbelief and minimisation that follows when they speak up.
- UK film criticism — every UK broadsheet review of Ladies First was written by a man, a fact Smith flags as evidence of the gender imbalance in the criticism industry itself.
- Reddit backlash — a male viewer posted in r/feminism and crossposted to r/askmen saying the film shifted his perspective on how women are treated; the r/askmen post was removed due to "enough reports" and replies came from men "trying to teach me that it's not actually the case."
Why it matters: Smith's defense reframes a critically panned Netflix comedy as cultural infrastructure, spotlighting the 38-point gap between the 26% critics score and the 64% audience score as evidence that accessible mainstream work can validate women's experiences in ways art-criticism-approved films don't. The piece also uses the film to expose that every UK broadsheet review came from a male critic — a structural angle the dominant "Netflix comedy gets panned" framing skips.
