If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a dark comedy centering around a mother whose life appears to be crumbling down. Her daughter has a mysterious illness that plagues their life, and her husband is mainly absent. On top of that, she is a therapist who has to navigate her patients’ issues, all without losing it from her own problems.
Linda (Rose Byrne) takes care of her daughter (Delaney Quinn), who has a stomach disorder where she must be fed through a tube. Linda has to constantly reason with her about that, among all the other questions and observations that kids come up with to annoy their parents. Her life doesn’t get any better when she comes home one day, and her daughter begins to tell her that there’s a huge puddle of water in the bathroom. As she goes to assess the situation, it takes a turn for the worse when the bedroom ceiling of their home collapses and floods the house. Her husband, Charles (Christian Slater), is away for work, and now Linda must deal with the repairs, all while moving to a motel in the interim.
“…a mother whose life appears to be crumbling down…”
As a therapist with a slew of clients, Linda must balance her own troubles with theirs. In particular, Caroline (Danielle Macdonald) has a newborn and paranoia about raising her baby. At one point during a session, Caroline loses it and just leaves the baby. Linda, to cope with her own issues, sees a therapist, goes to another therapist (Conan O’Brien) in her same office for her own therapy, but he eventually gets annoyed with her as she continually crosses professional and personal boundaries. At the motel, Linda befriends the motel superintendent, James (A$AP Rocky), who acts as a sounding board. He helps her get drugs and provides emotional comfort to her daughter. Just like with her therapist, Linda’s chaotic behavior eventually drives James batty and creates a wedge in their relationship.
As I finished watching If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, it reminded me of the female version of Falling Down, which starred Michael Douglas. In that film, he’s a dad who, over the course of the day, slowly loses it and takes matters to an extreme. This film follows that path, except it takes a more grounded approach to the daily issues that can compile and drive us nuts. The issue with this film is that although writer/director Mary Bronstein does a fine job of showing the difficulties of having an ill child and then unforeseeable circumstances that happen to us, as the pipe burst in the house, there is an entertainment factor that is lacking. It really turns into a thought of, “Yeah, and?” or makes you wonder why so many of us turn on reality television to find some fun in mindless entertainment as an escape from those life problems.
Although Byrne always brings a great performance in whatever she’s cast in, I would almost say just go watch her in Platonic. There she, too, plays a mom who deals with the issues of being married and life’s trials and tribulations. If there is one component where Mary Bronstein made a choice that works, it is that she hides the daughter’s face for most of the film, who is usually voicing off-camera but actually present in the shot. Christian Slater is off-camera for most of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, usually bickering with Rose Byrne’s character and talking down to her, which adds sympathy and reinforces the idea of the non-present husband. Another performance I was surprised by was Conan O’Brien. I’m sure, like most of us, we’re used to him as a talk show host and comedian. The choice to cast him as Linda’s own therapist — I couldn’t decide if it was spot-on or distracting, and all I could think was, “He’s playing serious; there’s no funny guy here.”
"…Byrne always brings a great performance..."
