Director: Mary Bronstein
Writer: Mary Bronstein
Stars: Rose Byrne, Danielle Macdonald, Conan O’Brien
Synopsis: With her life literally crashing down around her, Linda attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.
“Time is a series of things to get through.”
This is a thought that comes into Linda’s (an exceptional Rose Byrne) head when asked what she perceives time to be. It speaks to her worldview so perfectly. How disheartening is that? That life isn’t something that should be experienced, but rather dealt with, until we eventually no longer have things to go through. This is the central conceit around which Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You revolves. How to accurately describe this film proves quite the challenge, but it’s a challenge that Bronstein clearly reveled in creating. This film is a madhouse of sensory overload. It feels designed to make you laugh, wince, squirm, or perform some combination of all three in your seat. It’s also a devastatingly bleak film full of one of the most grim outlooks on life we’re bound to see in a film all year. And yet, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is also a raucous and exciting film any way you try to look at it. Bronstein has crafted a bold film about how easy it is for the hardships in life to swallow us completely. One thing is for certain; Linda doesn’t have it easy.
The film opens with an intense close-up on Linda’s face. She’s in a group therapy session where her unseen daughter refers to her as “stretchable… like putty.” Linda snaps for feeling as if she’s unable to speak, and delivers a borderline manic monologue about how all this talking, observations included, doesn’t seem to be addressing the issues at hand. Byrne’s performance comes out the gate incredibly strong. It’s easy to buy into an entire film watching her slowly break down psychologically and emotionally when this is her introduction to audiences. Much of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is played for laughs. At the very least, Bronstein is injecting this film with a sense of cosmic irony that the humor is able to arrive from. So, while audiences will be laughing quite often, there’s a lot more going on here than just empty comedic ideas. In fact, part of what makes If I Had Legs I’d Kick You so impressive is just how quickly Bronstein can shed the laughs of her film for a reaction that’s far more upsetting.
At one point in the film, Linda receives some rather frustrating news in her office. Her reaction is one that will surely be very relatable to most viewers. She grabs a pillow and violently screams into it. We then hard cut to the hallway outside her office. The door opens, Byrne pops her head out, and very calmly tells her next patient to come in. It’s one of the most classic bits in the comedy handbook. And make no mistake, it is just as funny here. But the longer Bronstein’s script torments Linda, the more difficult it is to look at these reactions without some sadness. As her Gen-Z patient drones on and on about an issue she had while shopping on the RealReal, Byrne’s face is weighed down with exhaustion. After screaming into the void for solace, Linda appears numb in the face of issues she deems to be irrelevant. Considering she’s a therapist, this poses a rather concerning issue. But it’s an issue that Bronstein clearly wants to pick apart and go all the way down to the bone with in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. This feels exceptionally true when thinking about a scene that’s bound to be remembered as one of the best comedy sequences of 2025.
After constant begging from her daughter, Linda acquiesces to her request and the two get into the car with a new pet hamster. From here, things go terribly awry with genuinely gut-busting laughs to likely be the reaction. It’s in this sequence that Bronstein points out the sheer ridiculousness of life. A chain of events can just completely spiral out of control to the point we can no longer process each individual piece at a time. Instead, we can either lash out and completely lose our cool, or take on a completely peaceful aura with the help of some substances and believe everything’s fine. Linda often alternates between both. Can anybody blame her? Life often dumps problems into our lap with little respite. And in most cases, it can overwhelm us to the point where we feel completely helpless and utterly alone. The painful irony of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You can be found right here.
Despite Linda feeling alone (and in many ways, she is), Bronstein surrounds her central character with an unreal ensemble of bit performances. The two that are most integral? Her therapist (Conan O’Brien) and her next-door neighbor (A$AP Rocky). In Linda’s eyes, they’re mostly there to torment and/or anger her. But they are shown to be quite helpful and kind on more than one occasion. Eventually though, it’s far too easy to hit a point where it still feels like we’re stranded on an island of our own making. Linda’s not to be blamed here, but as we watch her fall further and further into the frightening depths of her own mind, we can only hope she reaches out for somebody to catch her. She begins to outright refuse facing any problems head on. O’Brien delivers a perfectly exasperated yet deeply sympathetic tone to ask Linda how she expects anything to get better if inaction is the path she’s choosing. Linda merely replies that it won’t get better. By this point, it’s as if she has conceded to life’s overwhelming sense of defeat.
So the title of Bronstein’s film really says it all: if I had legs I’d kick you. In other words, if we didn’t feel so utterly helpless by life, maybe we could solve some of the problems put in front of us. But if we can’t, then what? What if all our attempts to make things better are met with even more absurd predicaments? One of the inciting incidents of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You sees a massive hole in Linda’s ceiling. As the film goes on, and the hole grows both literally and metaphorically, Bronstein’s film becomes more nightmarish. Visually, sonically, and thematically, Bronstein drags Linda and her audience down into the abyss. It’s here when the climax becomes an emotionally wrought and devastating prospect. Both the film and Linda feel like they have completely given up. The surreal nature of Bronstein’s script begins folding in upon itself. No matter how badly we want to patch the metaphorical holes in our lives, perhaps it’s easier to just succumb to the strength of the waves. At one point in the film, The Book of Matthew is quoted. It’s a passage that questions if it’s perhaps better to give in completely to the void of it all rather than condemn another to that same fate. But a committed Byrne and Bronstein’s perfect method of capturing desperation and facing struggle supply her audience with so much to chew on in the finale. It’s a film that’s both bonkers and panic-inducing. It also happens to be one of the best films of the year.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is celebrating its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in the Premieres category.
