The main character of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is named Linda (Rose Byrne), though nobody in the film actually uses her name. She’s having a very hard time. Her husband (Christian Slater) is away on business. Her unnamed daughter (Delaney Quinn) is mysteriously ill and doesn’t want to eat even though she’s dangerously underweight. She works as a psychotherapist, so she spends all her time listening to other people’s problems, including a new mother (Danielle Macdonald) who straight up abandons her baby in Linda’s office. On top of all that, Linda’s living out of a motel after the ceiling of her apartment in Montauk, N.Y. suddenly caves in. It’s hard to blame her for having some issues of her own. If only this movie, which opens at a few Tarrant County theaters this week, had anything else in it.
One brilliant touch the movie applies is not showing us the kid until the very end. For most of the film, the child is an offscreen voice complaining incessantly that the motel smells bad, she doesn’t want to eat more pizza, and she wants a pet hamster. This is how it must seem for Linda and other overwhelmed parents like her, as the child comes off as a bottomless pit of need rather than a person.
Another thing the movie excels at is Linda’s relationship with her own psychotherapist (Conan O’Brien), whom she’s likely seeing because his office is a few doors down the hall from hers. Finding a therapist is always more difficult in real life than it is in the movies, and this therapist is massively unhelpful. Perhaps he doesn’t need to hear what has happened in her dreams, but he comes off as annoyed and robotic in his sessions with Linda, constantly reminding her that he has other patients with bigger problems than hers. He finally terminates the relationship after she snaps her fingers in his face and yells, “Hello! Are you listening? Is any of this getting through?” This leaves her with no help, and she has no time to find another therapist who’s a better fit for her.
Mary Bronstein is this film’s writer and director and also portrays the daughter’s pediatrician. (By the way, Bronstein’s first feature was a 2008 film called Yeast, which starred Greta Gerwig and both the Safdie brothers. How did we all miss that one?) Her insistent focus on Linda’s point of view does some good things here, but it also turns the movie claustrophobic and one-note as Linda fails to catch any breaks in her interactions with anybody in her life, as her husband tells her to just handle things and passing strangers tell her she’s a bad mother. Contacted by phone, the abandoned baby’s father unloads on Linda: “This is not my problem! It’s not my fault that my wife lost her mind!” When Linda finally gives in and buys her daughter a hamster, that leads to another nightmarish set piece.
While Byrne is catching Oscar buzz for this movie because it’s a dramatic role for someone who usually acts in comedies, I don’t think she’s that good here. Like the movie, the performance is too much of the same thing throughout, and we don’t get a sense that she’s gradually cracking. Nor does the movie spring a surprise like Jason Reitman’s similar but superior Tully, which revealed that its main character was in much bigger mental trouble than we realized. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You — the title comes from a song that the little girl makes up — does manage to end on a hopeful note, but despite that and its director’s talent, it still emerges as a haunted-house carnival ride. That’s probably not the impression a movie about a mother’s mental health problems should leave.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Starring Rose Byrne and Delaney Quinn. Written and directed by Mary Bronstein. Rated R.
