If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Mary Bronstein directs. Christopher Messina behind the camera. Lucian Johnston cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English, Spanish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 1Shot for just $1.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
• 2Released last year.
• 3Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Spanish.
• 4Directed by Mary Bronstein, shot by Christopher Messina. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 5Editor Lucian Johnston shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 6Rose Byrne and Conan O'Brien and A$AP Rocky carry the top of the cast.
• 7Marketing tagline: "Everything is under control.".
• 8IMDB entry: tt18382850 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 9Classified under 12 themes, including "hotel", "therapist", "long island, new york", "female protagonist".

The technical file

Cinematography

Christopher Messina

Editing

Lucian Johnston

Production design

Carmen Navis

Costume design

Elizabeth Warn

Makeup / hair

Sarit Klein

VFX supervisor

Anders Nyman

Sound

Filipe Messeder

Stunt coordinator

Nitasha Bhambree

Runtime

113 min · 1h 53m

Aspect ratio (typical)

1.37:1 (Academy)

Status

Released

Budget

$1,500,000

Box office

$1,709,642

Return

114% of budget

Original language

EN

Certification (US)

R

IMDB

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025) ↗

Rotten Tomatoes

92% 🍅 Fresh

Metacritic

78/100

IMDB rating

6.6/10 · 34,170 votes

MPAA

R

Also by

Mary Bronstein

• 
  Yeast

  2008 · ★ 5.6
• 
  Round Town Girls

  2009

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper Wallpaper Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  Mark Kermode reviews If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) | BFI Player

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  Amelia Dimoldenberg Asks Rose Byrne If She'd Be A Good Therapist | Oscars Pre-Luncheon Luncheon

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  Extended Scene

  Clip · Official
• 

  ▶
  Red Carpet Interviews

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  This Performance Got Rose Byrne an Oscar Nomination

  Clip · Official
• 

  ▶
  The Oscar Nominated Hamster Scene

  Clip · Official

Community reviews

What people are saying

• Brent Marchant2025-11-29
  ★ 9/10

  In an age where life’s everyday challenges can test our wits, becoming overwhelmed is a real possibility when they pile up. Just ask Linda (Rose Byrne), a therapist who struggles to sincerely and sensitively assist her troubled patients. But that’s just the start of her problems. She’s also tending to a sick child (Delaney Quinn), the demands of which are considerable, both from the whiny, often-unappreciative youngster and her annoyingly insistent caregivers. To make matters worse, a burst pipe in the ceiling of her apartment has forced mother and child to move into a hotel, a stay that’s become unexpectedly extended due to the lack of repair work by her inattentive landlord. And, through all of these ordeals, Linda is on her own, given that her unfeeling husband (Christian Slater) is frequently away on business. As a consequence, this palette of issues has forced Linda into therapy herself with a peer counselor (Conan O”Brien), whose incessant indifference not only offers little help, but also tends to exacerbate the stress in her life. Over time, the specific pressures associated with each of these incidents begin to snowball, making coping nearly impossible. And, as time passes, Linda feels as though she’s losing herself and descending into her own personal madness. So what is she to do? That’s what this intense offering from actress-writer-director Mary Bronstein seeks to explore. This exceedingly dark comedy-drama examines what a woman on the edge might go through as the breaking point approaches. There’s an undeniably raw, edgy, realistic quality to this release, one that sometimes makes this a decidedly uncomfortable watch. The barrage of challenges to simply get through the day keeps coming at the protagonist (and, hence, viewers) relentlessly, presented here in nonstop fashion at breakneck speed. And it seems that, no matter what good faith efforts Linda makes to resolve her dilemmas, they’re never enough, often exposing her to petty, undue criticism that, in turn, prompt undue, unfair and unfounded accusations of blame and shame. All of these foregoing attributes are routinely intensified by the picture’s regular use of macabre comic relief, serving up laughs about incidents and subjects that many of us might genuinely feel guilty chuckling about. But this film’s real standout asset is the superb performance turned in by Byrne, easily the best work of her career and handily worthy of awards consideration, capably backed by Quinn, O’Brien and other cast members in fine supporting portrayals. To be sure, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” won’t suit everyone, and even avid cinephiles may at times find their patience, tolerance and sensibilities sufficiently challenged. Nevertheless, this is one of those “sign of the times” pictures that unflinchingly exposes much of what’s wrong with contemporary society and that we’d all be wise to take seriously if we ever hope to see improvement in a world where a lack of compassion, understanding and support are being allowed to run rampant. It’s no wonder that so many of us might feel like kicking back under conditions like this. Indeed, maybe it’s time we should all seek to grow some legs of our own.

  Read full review ↓
• CinemaSerf2026-03-06
  ★ 6/10

  Rose Byrne turns in a terrific performance here, but I found the thrust of the plot to be just a bit too much like a contrived horror movie. She is “Linda”, a therapist whose husband is off piloting a boat and whose un-named daughter has some form of undefined illness that is putting huge pressure on her mother. Then, just to add to her woes, a water leak in their apartment turns her ceiling into a Swiss cheese and forces them to take refuge in a rather basic motel. With the sounds of the child’s feeding machine never far from her dreams, “Linda” heads firmly into the realms of a sleep-deprived and booze-induced nervous breakdown that her own psychiatrist (Conan O’Brien) is unable to help with. She is steadily losing the plot, and so are we. Just what is going on with the woman, and with her faceless offspring? At times this is quite an intensely written and potent observation of mental stress and Byrne really does manage to convey her character’s increasing hysteria quite compellingly, but there are too many pieces of the puzzle missing for us to make any meaningful assessment or to do really much more than recoil from her predicament. A little sense of the proceedings is made right at the very end, but by then I had become too lost, and actually disinterested, in it’s maelstrom of despair. The film does convey quite a powerful message about the importance of listening, and of the frustrations and dangers of not listening, but too many of the ancillary characters are either absent, undercooked or just simplistically portrayed - personally or via the telephone, as little more than excuses for her character to present us with someone ostensibly abandoned by those who might and should want to care for her. In the end it came down to a lack of plausibility for me as it built to a conclusion that became a little more expected as we got to know more about “Linda”. It is worth a look, but really only for a Byrne at the top of her game.

  Read full review ↓
• badelf2026-06-15
  ★ 10/10

  With truly sincere apologies to Almodóvar, the alternate title to this film could be "Woman in the Throes of a Nervous Breakdown." Mary Bronstein's debut feature captures the absolute insanity of raising a child in this time and place with such visceral precision that watching it feels less like cinema and more like surviving someone else's panic attack in real time. Rose Byrne plays Linda, a therapist whose life is disintegrating on every front: a child with a mysterious illness requiring a feeding tube, an absent husband, a missing person case, and her own increasingly hostile therapy sessions with a colleague played by Conan O'Brien. Byrne is so devastatingly good in this role that it becomes genuinely difficult to tell if she's acting or actually stuck in the situation. Every frayed nerve, every moment of barely controlled hysteria, every attempt to hold it together while everything falls apart feels utterly, uncomfortably real. This is fearless work, the kind of performance that makes you wonder what it costs to go to those places. The soundtrack and sound design, crafted by Filipe Messeder with re-mixing by Ruy Garcia, function as the film's true co-star. This is genuinely unique and original work; Bronstein and her sound team use audio not just to underscore Linda's mental state but to replicate it. The soundscape becomes oppressive, intrusive, relentless in ways that mirror the demands of parenthood, the medical system, professional obligations, the voice in your head telling you you're failing at everything simultaneously. It's brilliant, suffocating filmmaking. There's a pointed meta-story here about therapists being unable to manage their own children and lives, about the particular irony of spending your professional life helping others navigate crisis while drowning in your own. Linda dispenses wisdom she can't apply, maintains boundaries she can't sustain, performs competence while unraveling. It's a sharp observation about the helping professions, about the gap between what we know intellectually and what we can actually do when our own world is on fire. Bronstein's vision here establishes her as a director to watch. She refuses to soften the edges, refuses to provide easy catharsis or reassuring resolution. This is horror filmmaking in the truest sense; not jump scares or supernatural threats, but the genuine terror of feeling your grip on sanity slipping while still being expected to function, to parent, to show up. It's the kind of film that makes some viewers want children even less and makes parents feel seen in ways that are both validating and destabilizing. If I Had Legs is genuinely hard to watch, a masterwork of psychological horror that understands motherhood as the impossible task it often is, performed with courage by Byrne and directed with uncompromising vision by Bronstein. 10/10

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• 

  A24

  US

• 

  Central Pictures

  US

• 

  Fat City

  US

• BR

  Bronxburgh

  US

Key crew

• Co-ProducerTatiana Bears
• Co-ProducerBruno Vernaschi-Berman
• Stunt CoordinatorNitasha Bhambree
• ProducerRyan Zacarias
• ProducerJosh Safdie
• ProducerSara Murphy
• EditorLucian Johnston
• ProducerEli Bush
• ProducerRichie Doyle
• ProducerConor Hannon
• Associate ProducerLauren Ebner
• ProducerRonald Bronstein
• Production DesignCarmen Navis
• Costume DesignElizabeth Warn
• Supervising Sound EditorFilipe Messeder
• Sound Re-Recording MixerFilipe Messeder
• Sound DesignerFilipe Messeder
• CastingGeraldine Barón
• CastingSalome Oggenfuss
• Art DirectionKyra Boselli
• Set DecorationKaili Corcoran
• GafferMatthew Atwood
• Executive ProducerMary Bronstein
• Executive ProducerRose Byrne

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• hotel
• therapist
• long island, new york
• female protagonist
• sick child
• motherhood
• woman director
• absent husband
• psychological drama
• mysterious illness
• montauk
• parenting stress

Release history · US

When it landed

• Premiere2025-01-24· Sundance Film Festival
• Premiere2025-08-30· Telluride Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-02· New York Film Festival
• Premiere2025-09-21· Fantastic Fest
• Premiere2025-09-26· Beyond Fest
• Premiere2025-10-04· Hamptons International Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-16· Chicago International Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-19· Philadelphia Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-10· Mill Valley Film Festival
• Theatrical (limited)2025-10-10R· New York City, New York / Los Angeles, California

Also known as

International titles

• Ayaqlarım Olsaydı Səni TəpikləyərdimAZ
• Kdybych měla nohy, tak ti nakopuCZ
• Ak by som mala nohy, tak ťa nakopemSK