Think Things Couldn’t Get Worse? Think Again!
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
However, if you’d like to know more about rationale of my ratings visit this explanatory site.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
WHAT HAPPENS: Psychotherapist Linda (Rose Byrne) needs therapy herself—which she (unsuccessfully) attempts to get from her unsympathetic colleague (played by Conan O’Brien in an effective dramatic role)—due to her life increasingly falling apart, starting with the daily stress of trying to help her daughter (not named nor shown until the last scene; voice of Delaney Quinn) gain weight as she’s suffering from some unspecified disease that requires a nightly ingestion of nutrients into her stomach, fed by a machine while she’s asleep. (We don’t see much of the machine either, although we have to surmise she’s connected to it all of the time because Dr. Spring [played by director Bronstein] surprises Linda by telling her that when the girl can reach her needed poundage the tube will simply be pulled out rather than requiring any sort of surgery so obviously Linda doesn’t insert this device every night, then remove it the next morning; despite its necessary presence for the girl, though, this daily input works against Linda’s weight-gain goal by giving the kid a sense of rebellion, not actually eating enough during each day as she can depend on the machine to give her some sense of food so she doesn’t consume nearly as much as Linda tries to encourage her to do.)
As if this situation isn’t enough to keep Linda distressed and preoccupied on a regular basis, here’s what else she has to deal with in the short time presented in this film: (1) The ceiling above her apartment suddenly has water pouring through from a large hole, forcing Linda and the girl to retreat to a local motel; (2) Her landlord just offers excuses why it will take some time to repair the ceiling: (3) The motel has a surly night clerk, Diana (Ivy Wolk), who keeps flinging attitude at Linda (4) Dr. Spring, at the clinic where the daughter spends her days with other children suffering from various problems hounds Linda for not attending sessions with other mothers of kids in the care of this place despite Linda’s inability to attend due to her other problems with the Doc implying Linda’s kid might have her care reduced if she doesn’t gain a couple of pounds by next week; (5) Linda’s husband, Charles (Christian Slater), a cruise ship captain is away for long stretches, criticizes her in phone calls for not handling her problems better; (7) Linda doesn’t sleep much at night due to the feeding machine’s noise so she goes outside the motel room to smoke pot, drink wine, leaving her compromised the next day; (8) New mom Caroline (Danielle Macdonald) is overly emotional and needy, runs away from her therapy session leaving her baby behind so Linda has to deal with that; (9) Even the simple attempt to get Linda’s girl a pet hamster ends in tragedy when it escapes the car, is quickly run over. ⇒One night, Linda pulls out the feeding tube herself (though it’s impossibly long), then goes to the apartment where she finds Charles has returned, brought about repair of the ceiling. They return to the motel where Linda freaks out, runs to the nearby ocean, tries to drown, but huge waves keep pushing her back. When she revives, her daughter’s there as Linda promises to “be better.”⇐ If you want more plot details (there are several), you can explore this helpful site.
SO WHAT? I don’t have any clear explanation of this film’s title, although I assume it refers to Linda’s increasingly-debilitating frustration with her horrendous situation so I guess she feels like she wants to lash out (even more than with her angry hang-ups in many of her phone calls) in a physical way toward those she sees as her tormentors but she doesn’t because she lacks control of her life, what academics might call nonexistence of “agency.” (How’s that for a high-falootin’ word? Yet, I probably shouldn’t use it because it smacks too much of DEI concepts; you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime soon U.S. government agencies have to drop that word from their names, replacing it with something like “Patriotic Employees Group.") As with my recent review of Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, 2025) where I felt Ethan Hawk’s constant command of the screen encouraged me to take an ordinary film situation up into 4 stars-range, so I feel the same way about Byrne’s powerful portrayal of a woman pushed to the brink (if not into the abyss) of madness, so another 4 stars-response from me here, thanks to the narrative-domination of 2026 Actress in a Leading Role Oscar-nominee Byrne. (She’s won some awards already as varying versions of Best Actress from, among others, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Globes [oddly enough, in their Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy category, though I find little to laugh at in … Kick You], the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle, but she faces tough competition for the Oscar [you'll need to scroll down into her category].)
Two other aspects of … Kick You I found interesting (though you may not, as with the Henderson review in this posting’s next section below) are how Linda is often shown in close-ups or even extreme close-ups so that the film frame boundaries give her almost no room to maneuver or even breathe, indicating how fiercely her life is confining her, and some scenes that are clearly fantasies in her mind put on screen to show us how traumatized she is in certain very intense situations, leaving us to wonder how much of what’s presented is truly happening, how much is disturbed projection (the most unnerving scene for me is when Linda’s pulling the feeding tube out of her daughter’s stomach with the device impossibly too long to have been inside of the girl’s abdomen; very creepy).
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You opened in domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters on October 10, 2026, is still playing in some of them, has grossed $1.1 million ($1.4 million worldwide) so far, and is most likely available to you via streaming where it’s free to HBO Max subscribers—sometimes pops up on HBO cablecast as well (that’s where I saw it)—or can be rented for #4.99 from Amazon Prime Video. The CCAL, along with me, encourages you to watch with 91% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, a 77% average score at Metacritic, although it becomes increasingly-depressing to subject yourself to these ongoing tragedies (despite Byrne’s fabulous performance), as even those who support it will admit, like Stephanie Zacharek of TIME: “Being a mother is perhaps the most sanctified role in human civilization. What woman would ever want to admit she’s botching it? […] We feel terrible for her, and we completely understand why she’s falling apart. But do we really want to keep walking with her every step of the way, even as she appears to be heading right over the edge? If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is hardly full-on punishment, and in places it’s bitterly funny. But in the end, it’s an enormous relief to walk away from Linda’s problems. Our own don’t seem so bad in comparison.” Others, such as Odie Henderson of The Boston Globe, find considerably less to admire: “Cinematic endurance tests don’t work if you have no connection to the character being dragged through the wringer. People raved about “Uncut Gems” because they felt riveted enough to go on Adam Sandler’s arduous journey. I was not one of those people, but I get why the film was such a success. [… in contrast]] I found Byrne’s work intriguing at first, but ultimately redundant and routine. She’s either freaking out, cursing somebody out, frazzled beyond repair, or drunk/high. Every scene is some kind of argument, and that’s before the movie untethers itself from reality. Those surreal moments do not work at all; they make us question if the entire movie was a figment of Linda’s imagination. […] It overstays its welcome by at least 30 minutes.” Or not, I’ll say, probably depending on audience endurance for character-misery.
(Director Bronstein as Dr. Spring.)
So, be warned; what you’ll see here shows overwhelmingly brutal personal situations which may accumulate to be more than you can digest, despite the cinematic impact Byrne brings to these events. While you're deciding whether to experience that or not, I’ll give you another option by the use of my usual Musical Metaphor—which I admit is not a fully ideal one because unlike the person being sung about Linda doesn’t intentionally bring all of her misery on herself, though she does share the song's sense of someone's troubles—The Eagles’ "Desperado" (1973 album of the same name) which I’ve used 8 times already in these reviews, showing I’ve seen some miserable folks over the years: “Oh, you’re a hard one, but I know that you got your reasons / These things that are pleasin’ you can hurt you somehow […] And freedom, oh, freedom, well, that’s just some people talkin’ / Your prison is walkin’ through this world all alone […] You’re losin’ all your highs and lows / Ain’t it funny how the feelin’ goes away? […] You better let somebody love you before it’s too late.” We can’t be sure if it’s too late for Linda or not (Can we believe what we see in the last scene?), but maybe she can “be better” as she tells her daughter at the end, if she'll ever get some cooperation.
SHORT TAKES
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