If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Movie Review (2025)

A weighty film about a woman dealing with a sick daughter, a difficult marriage, and hole in her roof, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a brilliant look into the jostling gears of a struggling mind.

When people trade memes about the stressors of being an adult, most of us chuckle. As a kid, you couldn’t wait to grow up, and now that you’re there, it’s not always as exciting as you’d been hoping. You do get to stay up all night eating candy if you want to, but you also have the unfair burden of knowing that you’ll feel sick in the morning. It can be a real bummer.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is about Linda, a woman wrapped up in her own misery. Her adolescent daughter won’t eat, so she has a feeding tube that must be refilled regularly or it begins beeping. She takes her daughter to a wellness day program where they can keep an eye on her health and where Linda has to drop her off and pick her up every day. She also works as a therapist, her husband is away, and a huge hole has just opened up in the roof of her home.

I have never seen a film constructed in this way before and it is fascinating. Linda is wholly overwhelmed by her life and spiraling down very quickly. The camera primarily focuses on Linda because Linda focuses on Linda. You occasionally see feet and legs and other people, but for most of the movie, the camera is trained on Linda, sometimes in heavy closeups of her face.

She hears her daughter speaking, but she doesn’t really see her. Her daughter is seemingly a normal kid with terrible anxiety and fears of death, and Linda is just trying to make it through each day, with another issue piling on.

Linda is not likeable. She is selfish and has emotionally separated herself from everyone but her own therapist (played by Conan O’Brien), as she attempts to put out one fire after the next, some of which she creates herself.

But it makes you wonder if Linda was always this way or if the slow overwhelm of life turned her into the irresponsible mother and human that you now see. She is so busy tending to her own immediate needs of overload that she has no vision of the potential consequences of her actions – or she just doesn’t care.

Rose Byrne is stunning as Linda. This is the best role I’ve ever seen her in and she is absolutely fantastic. There are no breaks for her, she is the movie, so there is nowhere to hide if she wanted to. She is vulnerable and confused and awful to herself and other people, and she plays it all remarkably.

While this is a drama, there are moments of levity and surprise. It’s not funny for Linda, but it is darkly funny for the audience.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an excellent film that is unique in story and tone even though the story of an overwhelmed mother has been told countless times. I highly recommend this one, and look forward to hearing what you think.

Runtime: 113 minutes

Motion Picture Rating: R

Languages Spoken In The Film: English

Should You Watch It? Yes

Did I Cry? Nope

My Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Available: Currently in theaters