loading . . . Review: “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” Until a few weeks ago, I was sure that “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” would head my year-end list of the Worst Movies Of 2025.
And then I saw this piece of garbage, “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You,” which is not only bad, but actively annoying. It’s the most irritating movie I have sat through since Darren Aronofsky derailed Jennifer Lawrence’s career in 2017 with “Mother.”
“If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” is the ultra-depressing story of Linda (Rose Byrne), a woman having a nervous breakdown because everything in her life is going wrong. She has an exceedingly whiny daughter with a mysterious medical condition. Her daughter’s doctor is demanding and strident. Linda’s husband is away, working at sea for weeks on end, totally unsympathetic to what she’s going through. She is a therapist with patients who aren’t just needy, they’re insufferable. And she has has her own therapist, played by the completely miscast Conan O’Brien, and their sessions yield nothing good, either.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, the ceiling of Linda’s bedroom caves in, dripping large amounts of water and later oozing some disgusting goo. When she can’t get a contractor to fix it, she moves into a motel which has a desk clerk who would never be nominated for a customer service award.
Not one of these characters is pleasant in any way — including Linda, despite Rose Byrne’s best efforts.
The blame for this mess lies squarely on the shoulders of writer/director Mary Bronstein (who also plays the bad doctor). Maybe in creating this human hellscape, she was inspired by Martin Scorsese’s 1985 classic “After Hours,” in which Griffin Dunne plays a guy trying to find a woman he’s attracted to in Greenwich Village, but getting waylaid at every turn.
If that’s what Bronstein was shooting for, she not only missed the bullseye, she didn’t even hit the target. In addition to the incompetent storytelling, she shot the majority of the movie in closeups so extreme I could count Byrne’s facial pores. Her soundtrack is riddled with screeching audio effects that would trigger migraines, even in people who’ve never had one. Bronstein also inserts some weird visuals in the ceiling hole and elsewhere, all without any explanation. Is Linda hallucinating or is something supernatural going on? I have no idea, and even less interest.
I’m rarely angry when I walk out of a movie, even the ones I hate, but “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” left me fuming and grumbling about the 110 minutes I’ll never get back.
Although I usually grade on a scale of one to ten, this gets a ZERO out of 10. Thus, it has wrested the Worst Movie Of 2025 crown away from “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.”
The last movie I rated this low was “Babylon,” the 2022 Damien Chazelle misfire that starred Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie (you can read that review here). Maybe someday it and “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You” can play on a double feature at the Bang Your Head Against The Wall Cineplex. https://harrisonline.com/review-if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you/
