If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Warning: This review is for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which is a film presented at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. There may be slight spoilers present. Reader discretion is advised.
Image courtesy of the Toronto International film Festival.
Coming in with one of the more intriguing titles of the Toronto International Film Festival — besides Todd Rohal’s Fuck My Son!, I suppose — is Mary Bronstein’s second film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, arriving seventeen years after the mumblecore classic, Yeast. I didn’t understand the film’s name at first until it took some discussion with some colleagues even after viewing the press screening. I believe it is an indication of the act of how one stymies themself through mental health woes, via a contradictory title (in the context of the film, I must add; the line is never spoken either, so I am just basing it on the protagonist and her mindset). Our lead character, Linda (Rose Byrne), does have legs, so she is forcing herself to believe that she doesn’t, and she uses the discovery of her actually having legs not to help herself but to hurt others. If my assessment is correct, it certainly shows in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You: a film that is all about the reluctance to get better because of one’s insistence that either A) all is already fine, or B) nothing is fixable, so why bother trying to heal.
We start off with an opening shot of Linda’s eyes, with tears welling up behind her thousand-yard stare and noise all around her. She is in a family therapy session with her ailing daughter who is left unnamed (played by Delaney Quinn). Linda’s daughter uses a gastrostomy tube because she has developed eating disorders and does not like when food is squishy, amongst many other traits (an early scene presents the daughter asking for her mother to remove all of the cheese off of her pizza slices). Linda also sees her own therapist, who is also left unnamed (but is played by the late-night titan Conan O’Brien); her therapist is blunt in an effort to get Linda to help herself. This may be because of something we only learn roughly a fifth of the way through the film: Linda herself is a therapist as well. It is highly common for therapists to have their cohorts as their own shrinks to talk to, and If I Had Legs displays this dynamic effectively: how can someone who is so burdened with the issues of others be able to be there for themself?
The shit hits the fan right at the beginning of the film when a dripping problem from the second floor onto the first turns into the floor/ceiling fully collapsing, leaving a giant hole, asbestos, mold, and other delightful worries. Linda and her daughter stay in a motel where they are stationed next to the superintendent, Jamie (played by rapper ASAP Rocky). Linda’s husband is a captain who is away from home for large periods of time and — as you may guess — is not present for the series of debacles that Linda is about to face (I won’t reveal who the mystery actor who plays Linda’s husband is because If I Had Legs clearly wants you to go in blindly and try to guess via the many phone calls throughout the film). While at the motel, Linda has to balance a plethora of dilemmas ranging from problematic patients, the hole at home not being fixed, and her daughter’s illness.
It is clear that Linda is trying her best to stay strong but is adamant on hurting herself — and others — in her stubbornness; she seeks help but also additionally refuses it in return. Byrne is sensational as Linda and never plays this anxious character as a single note. There’s a palette of nerves, panic, self-blame, confusion, and regret that paint Linda all thanks to Byrne’s career-best performance: one that is so believable that I swore I saw my own therapist from many years ago in her preliminary sequences; as someone who often gets in his own way, I saw myself in the latter scenes (but clearly not to the extent that Byrne’s Linda experiences). If I Had Legs feels complete in the sense that Byrne has turned this cry for help into an internal monologue that occasionally cracks through into the open.
Otherwise, I feel like If I Had Legs is far too much with very little to work with. Its intentions are pure, but Bronstein’s attempts on adding as much as possible renders the film imbalanced (and quite a bit so). It is a harrowing comedy-drama indie, but it continuously wishes to become a hyperbolic, even surreal psychological satire. The relationship between the two halves never meshes properly. In the same film where we see a woman breaking down bit by bit and it feels incredibly honest and raw, we have flashes of something that feels like the film wants to break out and become a fully fledged science fiction film. I understand that everything is in Linda’s head, but there is a responsibility to blur these lines between reality and one’s subconscious far better than If I Had Legs does. These sequences feel cartoonish at times and took me out of Linda’s mind: the exact opposite of what Bronstein intended, clearly. The worst offender is — without spoiling — the “hamster” sequence which is meant to be hilariously grim but instead felt more like the useless alien cutaway gag from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian: the difference is that such a joke works in a silly film like this, but the hamster bit does not work in If I Had Legs (if anything, it felt like an Adult Swim throwaway bit in a mostly serious film).
The film stunts itself quite a bit in this nature. O’Brien and ASAP Rocky are quite great in their roles, but we don’t get enough depth from how their characters are written for any of them to matter more than they easily could have. I did laugh a few times, but other jokes feel forced to lighten moments that didn’t have to be made goofier. Then there are creative choices that I do appreciate, mainly the refusal to show the children featured in the film unless it was absolutely necessary. In the case of Linda’s patient, Caroline (Danielle MacDonald), we don’t see her newborn (despite seeing their carrier, covered by a blanket) until there is a point to see them. With Linda’s daughter, I thought we were forced to never see her because of the heaviness that is present when seeing an ill child, but I learned that Bronstein savoured this reveal for something far more special (yes, even more special than the guest actor playing Linda’s husband): a message — and the face — of inspiration.
It is too bad that If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is burdened with the same infliction that Linda and many other characters face within it. So often, the film wants to ascend and become this fantastical depiction of mental ache but it can only go so far with these moments being few and far between. I wish the film either went fully absurd with its psychological visions in the vein of Black Swan because we don’t get enough to justify the tonal inconsistencies that do occur her. Either that, or I would have preferred if the film focused on being strictly rooted in reality so we could get a visceral character study. If I Had Legs is very much in the same wheelhouse as indie films like Pieces of a Woman and Causeway: smaller budgeted efforts with much to say about healing and hurting without figuring out the best ways to make the most out of fewer resources. However, when you have Rose Byrne as your primary reason for existing, then maybe If I Had Legs isn’t so bad, given that the Australian star delivers one of 2025’s top performances (which is reason enough to watch this film). Otherwise, like others see with Linda, I see potential here that is untapped and it pains me that the film itself couldn’t believe that it was capable of being better. Instead, it falls to its nagging inner thoughts, projections, and worries; it truly is its own worst enemy.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.