Review of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, directed by Mary Bronstein

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is one of those movies I debated seeing while it was in theaters, and then procrastinated so hard that it was out of theaters when I actually felt like going. Then when I randomly saw it on a streaming platform one day I kind of just shrugged and decided to watch it in the moment. I had just seen Rose Byrne in the Broadway show Fallen Angels, so it was kind of like the stars aligned.

And that’s how I finally ended up watching it! It took a few months, but I got there. Let’s get into the review!

A stressed out mother slowly snaps because of her daughter’s situation and her life, leading to some devastating personal consequences.

Our main character in this movie is Linda, who cares for her daughter while her husband is away while working on a ship. Every night her daughter has to be plugged into a feeding tube because of a feeding disorder, and Linda has to drive her back and forth to the hospital for a program she’s enrolled in. Things get really bad though when their apartment floods, leaving Linda and her daughter to live out of a motel.

The motel they live in is kind of grungey, with the employees refusing to give Linda more alcohol throughout the course of the movie. It doesn’t help that she can’t sleep because of the feeding machine making noise throughout the night, so when Linda can’t sleep, she smokes weed, drinks, and binge eats.

At the same time their apartment isn’t getting fixed, and her personal life is starting to bleed into her professional one. It doesn’t help that she has some complicated and difficult patients, nor that her daughter’s doctor has her eye on her because of how Linda keeps missing appointments.

Her husband also doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening and criticizes her for not handling it properly, as he thinks she just sits around all day. Her daughter’s doctor then tells Linda that her daughter needs her care assessed again because she’s not meeting her weight goals.

When one of Linda’s patients abandons her son in her office, she calls the woman’s husband and he refuses to help. One of the motel employees helps Linda buy some drugs one day, then asks to see her apartment. She thinks he can help her, as he worked with other contract gigs, but he breaks his leg on the floor and she ends up leaving him there.

Next up in the chaos is that the doctor makes the executive decision that Linda’s daughter can’t reach the weight she needs. Linda has a breakdown in front of everyone, then admits to her own therapist that she has failed as a mother. He then tells her he can no longer do this.

After her patient asks for help in a crisis, Linda goes to help her but loses the woman on a beach. She goes home and removes her daughter’s tube, then heads to the apartment. There, she finds her husband and the hole in the ceiling fixed, but when they go back to the apartment, they find the motel employee with their daughter.

Her husband sees that the feeding tube is removed and is enraged. Linda runs away tot he beach and throws herself into the water. Then she wakes up with her daughter there, where she promises everything will get better.

Overall Thoughts

This is a movie that definitely tests your patience because of how unlikeable the main character is. She’s also going through a mental breakdown and crisis of her own throughout the course of the movie, and it’s because of that you’re pushed to the brink with her.

Rose Byrne also does a fantastic job. I was shocked at how good she was when I saw Fallen Angels on Broadway. She’s a talented actress, and this is the first time I’ve personally watched a movie she’s starred in.

All in all, I’m glad I watched this movie, even though I don’t know if I would say I enjoyed it. It left me feeling sad, although we can feel viscerally how the main character’s world is quickly closing in on her. Her daughter comes across as a nagging presence from the beginning, which is sad as well.

I say that if you’re interested in this movie, then give it a chance, especially if you can find it on streaming or through a DVD copy in a library system.

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