If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Mary Bronstein
Written by	Mary Bronstein
Produced by	Sara Murphy Ryan Zacarias Ronald Bronstein Josh Safdie Eli Bush Conor Hannon Richie Doyle
Starring	Rose Byrne Conan O'Brien Danielle Macdonald Christian Slater ASAP Rocky
Cinematography	Christopher Messina
Edited by	Lucian Johnston
Production companies	A24 Central Pictures Fat City Bronxburgh
Distributed by	A24
Release dates	January 24, 2025 (2025-01-24) (Sundance) October 10, 2025 (2025-10-10) (United States)
Running time	113 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1.4 million[2][3]

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is a 2025 American drama film, written and directed by Mary Bronstein. It stars Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Delaney Quinn, Christian Slater, and A$AP Rocky.

The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2025, and a domestic release by A24 on October 10, 2025, to positive reviews. Byrne's performance in the film received universal acclaim, earning her the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Performance and a Golden Globe Award, alongside nominations for the Critics' Choice Award, Actor Award, BAFTA Award and Academy Award for Best Actress.^[4]

Linda is a psychotherapist who is stretched to her limits while caring for her daughter, who has a pediatric feeding disorder that necessitates nightly supplemental feeding through a tube and participation in a day hospital program, which Linda drives her to and from, every day. Linda's husband, Charles, is away at work as a ship's captain.

The family's situation worsens when their Montauk apartment is flooded after the ceiling collapses. Linda is forced to move, with their daughter, into a shabby motel. While living there, Linda meets a sarcastic clerk named Diana, and her neighbor, James, the motel superintendent. Linda struggles to sleep, due to the noise from her daughter's feeding pump. She spends sleep-deprived nights outside the motel room, drinking wine, smoking cannabis, listening to music, and eating junk food. During the night, Linda also leaves her daughter to check on the apartment repairs, which have been left in limbo by the contractor's sudden departure.

Professionally, Linda is surrounded by difficult and demanding clients, including Caroline, a new mother suffering from paranoia and postpartum anxiety. Linda also seeks therapy from a colleague, who is largely unhelpful, and increasingly exasperated by her lack of professional boundaries. When Charles calls to check in on Linda, he is critical and unsupportive, stating he wishes he could "sit around all day" as a therapist. Her daughter's hospital program doctor is also unsympathetic, and reprimands Linda for frequently missing family therapy sessions. She tells Linda that if her daughter does not meet her weight goals by the end of the week, her daughter's level of care will be "reassessed." Linda feels she is being set up to fail, and that her daughter will not eat more, as long as she is reliant on the feeding tube.

During a therapy session, Caroline abandons her son in Linda's office. Linda tries, unsuccessfully, to get her therapist colleague to help her. She then calls Caroline‘s husband and requests that he come pick up his daughter immediately. He refuses to leave work to do so, forcing her to call the police.

One night, James attempts to bond with Linda. He helps her buy drugs on the dark web, and offers emotional support to her daughter. Linda eventually brings James to her apartment to look at the collapsed ceiling, due to his experience in general contracting, but he falls through the damaged floor and breaks his leg. Linda flees the scene after calling an ambulance for James.

After being told that her daughter cannot reach the necessary weight for her feeding tube to be removed, Linda causes a scene at the hospital program's group meeting for mothers in her situation, after the doctor upsets her by telling the group that their children's illnesses are not their fault. Linda confesses to her therapist that she aborted her first pregnancy years before having her daughter, and becomes distraught about her failings as a mother. He tells her he will no longer be her therapist. Caroline appears one night at the motel lobby during a mental health crisis, asking for Linda. As Linda tries to convince her to go to an emergency room, Caroline slaps her and runs away. Linda runs after her, but loses her on a dark nearby beach.

Returning to the motel, Linda forcibly removes her daughter's feeding tube, and has a hallucination of the surgical hole closing. When Linda returns to her apartment, she discovers that Charles has suddenly returned home and has had the hole in the ceiling repaired. Linda and Charles return to the motel room where she has left their daughter alone to find James, who is there because he heard the girl panicking and came in to calm her down. Charles sees that Linda has removed the feeding tube, and Linda flees to the beach, repeatedly running into the surf, but is thrown back to shore by heavy waves. Linda wakes up on the beach with her daughter beside her. She promises that she will "be better," and her daughter smiles.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You began filming in August^[7] and September 2023^[8] in Montauk, New York after SAG-AFTRA granted an interim agreement for the film amidst the actors' strike.^[9] The film was shot over 27 days, with Bronstein giving up her director's fee to obtain two additional shooting days. Due to the film's limited budget, surrealist elements of the film had to be recorded during post-production by Bronstein and the director of photography alone.^[10]

The film was Bronstein's first movie since her 2008 debut Yeast. According to Bronstein, she wrote the film as a means of processing the trauma she experienced while caring for her 7-year-old daughter, who was suffering from severe health problems at the time.^[11]

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2025.^[12] It had its international premiere in February 2025 at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in competition for the Golden Bear.^[13][14] Rose Byrne won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance.^[15] It was screened at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival,^[16] the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival,^[17] the 2025 New York Film Festival,^[18] and the 2025 BFI London Film Festival.^[19] The film was released by A24 on October 10, 2025.^[20]

It was also screened in the Best of 2025 section of the 20th Rome Film Festival in October 2025.^[21]

The first physical releases on Blu-ray and DVD were in Canada on December 23, 2025.^[22]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 190 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Liable to leave audiences in a cold sweat, this fever dream immersion into parental stress connects with thunderous force thanks to Rose Byrne's gutsy star turn and director Mary Bronstein's uncompromising vision."^[23] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[24]

Critics praised Byrne's performance, with Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times and Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Times calling it "magnificent".^[25][26] David Fear of Rolling Stone wrote, "[Rose Byrne] is particularly on-point here, the sort of exquisitely raw, white-knuckle performance that feels so voyeuristic and personal that, if you had any decency, you’d look away. She ensures that you can’t".^[27]

Multiple commentators compared the film favorably to Uncut Gems. Stephanie Zacharek of Time described the film as "Uncut Gems for moms". Zacharek and Whipp respectively pointed out Bronstein's husband is a frequent collaborator with the Safdie brothers and Josh Safdie is credited as one of the film's producers.^[26][28]

• If I Had Legs I'd Kick You at Rotten Tomatoes
• If I Had Legs I'd Kick You at IMDb