If I Had Legs I’d Kick You review by Bobby Blakey
I love it when a film has a great title that stands out to make your mind wonder what the hell are you walking into. The latest from director Mary Bronstein, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You instantly gave me that feeling. The film features a great cast including Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater and A$AP Rocky. Could this film bring something as unique to the story as it does with the title or will it fail to unlock the doors to success?
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You follows Linda who attempts to navigate her child's mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person, and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist with her life crashing down around her.
Without seeing any trailers for this film, I clearly had a different idea of what this film was going to be about. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it takes you into an entirely unexpected direction story wise and one that left me with a mixed bag of feelings. The story is really a deep dive into the stresses of parenting and life and the chaos that one person is pulled into. The execution here is excellent as it takes an interesting approach of never showing the child in the scenario despite being the focal point of Linda’s life.
This element keeps the focus on Linda and brings the audience into her place and experience that rubs right off onto the viewer good and bad. There are so many relatable aspects of parenting struggles that from the outside seem easy to fix, but seeing the effects on her emotions and psyche along with the life elements makes more sense. As the viewer I was in a constant state of distress with annoyance from the amount of crying, beeping, screaming and annoying people. Initially it made me hate the film before it connected that it was by design and the realism was coming off screen as intended.
Rose Byrne is outstanding in this film as she is trying her best to navigate her
situation. Her slow decent while trying to hold it all together is a deep emotional and physical change and deeper cements her performance. It had to be exhausting to live int this role and it shines through in her brilliance. The rest of the cast are good if not infuriating as well with very few on her side and getting you as angry as her in all aspects of her life.
This is a heavy flick that will no doubt inflict some emotional trauma on those that live this life and that is exactly what it is trying to do. It takes you deep into the world of parenting and life alone and the overwhelming toll it takes on someone that all they want to do is the right thing for everyone around them while sacrificing themselves.