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IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU - The Popcorn Junkies Movie Review (Spoilers)

·17 min·1 clip

You never see the daughter for almost the entire film, even though Linda talks to her constantly.

1. Popcorn Junkies reviews Mary Bronstein’s A24 film If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, with Rose Byrne as Linda and supporting turns from Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky, and Christian Slater. 2. Hayden frames the episode as a breakdown of a film he calls “possibly the most brilliantly titled film of the year thus far,” while Steven reacts as a first-time viewer through the show’s usual review format. 3. The episode’s core question is what this “obstreperous and difficult film” is actually doing with Linda’s stress, her daughter’s illness, and the film’s abstract style. 4. Bronstein’s film uses disjointed editing, hurried movement, and stressed sound design that the reviewer compares to Eraserhead and other David Lynch work. 5. Linda is presented as both a psychotherapist and a mother whose daughter has an unspecified eating disorder and is fed through a tube into her abdomen. 6. The review emphasizes that the daughter is almost never seen directly, with the film showing only hands, feet, hair, and the edge of her head. 7. The apartment ceiling collapses from a flood, forcing Linda and her daughter into a motel while the flat is repaired. 8. The reviewer argues that the hole in the ceiling mirrors the hole in the daughter’s body and becomes the film’s central visual metaphor. 9. The film repeatedly returns to Linda trying and failing to manage food, shelter, and medical responsibility at the same time. 10. The nurse, played by the director, keeps pressing Linda to support a plan for the daughter to gain weight and come off the tube. 11. Conan O’Brien plays Linda’s own therapist, and the reviewer describes him as detached, aloof, and visibly uninterested in her problems. 12. A$AP Rocky appears as a motel figure who may become a romantic interest and also offers the possibility of drugs, but the connection stays unstable. 13. The motel receptionist is described as a hostile gatekeeper who makes buying wine and getting through the day harder for Linda. 14. The reviewer says the film feels like a psycho-drama horror portrait of a mother’s mind collapsing under stress, self-loathing, and isolation. 15. He points to Linda’s compulsive eating, drinking, and inability to sleep as part of a portrait of ADHD-like overload. 16. A recurring image of blood and goo dripping near the ceiling hole is used to intensify the bodily metaphor. 17. The reviewer says the film’s extreme close-ups keep the camera on Rose Byrne’s face, making every reaction feel trapped and amplified. 18. The tone is highly verbal, informal, and physically reactive, with the reviewer repeatedly stopping to name what feels strange, stressful, or surreal. 19. Fans of Rose Byrne, A24 horror-tinged dramas, and surreal family breakdown stories will get the most out of this review. 20. Viewers looking for a calm, plot-first recap of a conventional drama may skip it.

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