I had never seen A24’s first release, and I knew it wasn’t the owner of the greatest of reviews, but I was not prepared for how rough a start the company got off to.

In the aftermath of his crash out in 2011 in which he lost his role in the extremely successful sitcom Two and a Half Men, Charlie Sheen became a public pariah and was the punchline of countless jokes. It was at this moment that Roman Coppola cast him in his new film A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III which would go on to be A24’s first release. The film played into the Sheen persona of the time in a way that with over a decade of hindsight feels like an edgelord attempting to be controversial but instead playing into tropes that were old even at the time.

Sheen plays the titular Swan, a self-described asshole whose brain is 80% consumed with thoughts of sex as he tries to deal with the reality of losing his girlfriend Ivana (Katheryn Winnick) when his womanizing ways are finally too much for her to put up with. The film plays out as a delusional ego trip by Charlie, as he and his best friend Kirby (Jason Schwartzman) blame women for all their troubles while objectifying them at the same time.

A Glimpse… falls into a common pitfall when viewing film through a critical lens including a feminist one, and that is that the text and subtext do not share a sentiment. While a depiction does not alone equate to condoning something, a film’s cinematic language can be used to determine its point of view. Charlie Swan might be seen as ridiculous and an asshole, but the film still relishes in its objectification and demonization of women. Apart from Patricia Arquette who plays Charlie’s sister, every other woman is shot through Charlie’s viewpoint of someone with exclusively sex on the mind. The film has no interest in exploring what a woman thinks, only what Charlie or Kirby thinks that they are thinking. Any attempts to claim the film thinks that the views of Charlie and Kirby are not what the filmmakers agree with is lost as the film relishes in the misogynistic musings of the two pigheaded men. The film even goes so far as to reward Charlie at the end of the film despite the character learning nothing and failing to grow throughout the length of the film.

Despite relying on a known entity in Roman Coppola and a reliable starting cast (Bill Murray also plays a supporting role), A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III was a rough place for A24 to begin its life in both quality and in its ability to be an improvement in how cinema sees women. Because of these flaws, it makes sense that their second release was the one that people associate with the beginning of the studio.