If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (2025) and Sorry, Baby (2025): What I’ve Been Watching Lately, part 3

By Len Weiler

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You 

I watched If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You on HBO Max. (For other home viewing options, see below.) The movie stars Rose Byrne as a woman at her wits end in a performance that has netted her a well-deserved Oscar nomination in the best actress category. She plays Linda, whose life as the film opens is already frazzled, juggling a professional work life with solo-parenting of a sick child. 

Linda’s perky young daughter has a feeding disorder requiring a feeding tube to get adequate nutrition; and now her treatment center is threatening to refuse further services if Linda can’t get her to meet a seemingly impossible weight gain goal - even as they assure Linda that “this is not your fault”. Linda herself is a psychotherapist with some impossibly needy clients who add - not insignificantly -  to her anxiety load.  As if this wasn’t bad enough, early in the film Linda’s apartment ceiling collapses, flooding the place and leaving a gaping, soul-sucking hole, forcing Linda to move with her daughter to a shabby motel. And the landlord is no help when the contractor he hired to fix things takes a vacation soon after. 

Where’s her husband in all this?   Charles (Christian Slater) is a ship’s captain who, because of his frequent travel,  is rarely around  – in fact, we don’t even see him until near the very end of the picture – so he’s no help. Rather, his obtuseness and his cavalier response to Linda’s anxiety only make things worse.  Her own therapist, beautifully played by Conan O’Brian, is aggravatingly useless as well.  And these are only some of the calamities that come Linda's way.  It's no wonder she is freaking out. 

While much of this plays as a dark comedy, Leah Greenblatt in the NYTimes puts it well when she writes, “Even watching the film feels harrowing, a sort-of two hour panic attack by proxy.”  Yet If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You IS a well made movie and Byrne - somewhat of a surprise choice for this definitely frantic and fraught role, is fantastic in it.  Despite all the frazzling, I couldn’t stop watching. 

At the same time, I was relieved when it was over, too .

While the story is based on writer-director Mary Bronstein’s own traumatic experiences with a similarly ill child a decade ago (and she has made it clear that the movie is no autobiography), even she doesn’t know quite how she came up with the title If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You. But it fits.

1 hour 53 minutes

Grade: B+

Streaming on HBOMax; and also available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV and other platforms.

Sorry, Baby 

This independent film written, directed and starring relative unknown Eva Victor, has been a favorite  of many film critics and other aficionados ever since its premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, receiving numerous awards as the best first feature film by a new filmmaker. It has a high critical rating from review aggregators Metacritic (score of 90) and Rotten Tomatoes (97).  I watched this one on HBO Max, too.

I didn’t like Sorry, Baby at all. To be fair, I only watched the first third of the picture, so there‘s the possibility that I might have come around to liking it if I had stuck it out a while longer. Still, this is far from a common practice, in fact it’s rare for me to bail on a movie at all,  particularly if it is reputed to be a very good, worthy film.  (I was seconded in my decision to quit by my viewing companion/spouse., so it’s not just me!)

Larry Lee thought much more highly the movie than I did, ranking it number ten in his recent list of the ten best movies of 2025, describing it as “a nuanced, entertaining yet emotionally honest movie” with “sly, quirky humor and terrific performances” 

Sorry, Baby is centered on a young woman named Agnes, the victim of a sexual trauma several years ago, who’s still struggling to deal with what happened, while others in her life have moved along with their lives.  

Why did I bail? It isn’t the subject matter. In fact, the core issue underlying Agnes’s situation was only beginning to appear on the horizon when I quit watching. Rather, it is the largely dull, pedestrian dialogue and the flat, nearly emotionless delivery of that dialogue by Agnes and her companions – in short, writing so poor that it called attention to itself. And, while I recognize that this is a first film for Ms. Victor, that’s no justification for its self-conscious approach to the cinematography - a typical example (repeated several times in various ways) being the choice to have the camera linger on the door for five or ten seconds after all the people who had been talking have left the room. Nothing metaphorical about that – just dull.

Given that my verdict on this movie is a minority view and that I opted  to turn it off prematurely, you may want to see it anyway.  But you ought to have a plan B.

1 hour 43 minutes

Grade: C

Streaming on HBOMax; Rentable on Prime Video, AppleTV, Fandango and other PPV platforms.