Honestly? There’s more screaming than kicking in this movie (CREDIT: Logan White/A24)
Starring: Rose Byrne, Delaney Quinn, Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky, Christian Slater, Danielle Macdonald, Mary Bronstein, Ivy Wolk
Director: Mary Bronstein
Running Time: 114 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: October 10, 2025 (Theaters)
A few months ago, New York Magazine published a cover story about kids with ARFID, an eating disorder caused not by body image issues but rather by the sensory characteristics of food, or fears of choking and/or vomiting, or a combination of these and other similar factors. In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Rose Byrne plays Linda, a therapist in therapy with a daughter (Delaney Quinn) who sure seems to have ARFID. On top of that, they’re living in a motel because of a spectacularly massive hole in Linda’s bedroom ceiling. With her husband away on work, daily life for Linda becomes more and more stressfully surreal and surreally stressful, with no end or relief to her struggles in sight. The hole feels like a portal to another dimension, while the daughter feels like an alien in a way that strong-willed kids often do. Eventually, though, some tactile and Earth-based solutions present themselves, offering at least a little bit of hope for the future. But I’ll never forget how If I Had Legs I’d Kick You succeeds best insofar as it captures how hallucinatory nightmares are lurking in just the tiniest slip of our typical realities.
Grade: Two Legs Up!
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