- Director: Thea Sharrock
- Screenplay: Natalie Krinsky, Cinco Paul, Katie Silberman
- Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Rosamund Pike, Charles Dance, Emily Mortimer, Tom Davis, Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw
- Cinematography: Haris Zambarloukos
- Editing: Mark Everson
- Score: Atli Örvarsson
- Genre: Comedy
- Runtime: 93 minutes
The FTSE Women Leaders Review published last year reports that 43% of roles on company boards are female occupied. Okay, so not necessarily the head honcho at the end of the table but certainly having a seat in the room is a start. That’s not to say they’re treated any better socially or even listened to as ‘Ladies First‘ suggests.
Damien Sachs (Sacha Baron Cohen) has everything he could wish for: wealth, power and the ability to charm under-30-year-old women into bed (though I highly doubt they’d sleep with him if he wasn’t so financially secure). He also has something that automatically comes with having a dong: male privilege. A package deal.
In order to save his company’s neck, he promotes the underappreciated Alex Fox (Rosamund Pike), a lady chosen because she’s alphabetically first on the list of female candidates. She’s the token woman in the boardroom, there simply to fill a space and not expected to make a peep. Damien thwacks his noggin on a pole, his attention naturally on some fleeting blonde. He awakes in a gender-flipped society where women (such as Alex) wear the trousers and men are objectified in media. The boot of chauvinism now on the other foot.
By exclusively placing women in positions of authority, the writers fight fire with fire – a move that leaves everyone burnt. I felt it trivialised the all-too-real gender imbalance. The men have become campy and obsessed with personal appearance – if you dared to suggest the opposite, you’d be rightfully chastised. As for the alpha females, those ballbusting businesswomen, I just couldn’t take them seriously. Needless to say I think women belong in the boardroom, they absolutely do. But these caricatures of the respective genders are so exaggerated as to be unhelpful. With a British cast and director, and set in Britain, the concept isn’t required as much as it is in the United States (where the screenwriters hail from); a country in which the top job is yet to be assumed by a single woman.
My rating: 5 / 10
SilverScreen 