Movie review
October 10, 2025 · 113 min · R
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
A psychotherapist named Linda tries to hold her life together while caring for her young daughter who has a serious feeding illness that requires tubes and hospital visits. Her husband is away for long periods, her apartment ceiling collapses and floods everything, forcing a move to a rundown motel, one of her therapy clients causes major problems, and her own therapist grows cold and unhelpful. The film delivers a raw, anxious, and intense drama about the crushing personal pressures of motherhood, caregiving, and losing your sense of self when everything around you falls apart, with noticeable focus on the specific emotional burdens and identity struggles tied to being a mother.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.
Woke representation / casting
The lead is Rose Byrne with a mostly traditional cast for a modern everyday story; A$AP Rocky has a supporting role as a helpful neighbor. No prominent identity signaling, quota-style casting, or emphasis on diversity in key positions that stands out to viewers.
Woke political dialogue
Dialogue stays on personal stress, family fights, therapy frustrations, medical worries, and daily survival. There are no activist speeches, identity arguments, or ideological lectures.
Identity-driven story themes
The core follows one mother’s breakdown under the weight of her child’s illness, absent support, and constant demands, with clear attention to how caregiving erodes her individual identity and sense of self. This draws from the director’s perspective on women’s specific emotional burdens but stays personal and dramatic rather than activist group-identity messaging.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Therapy comes across as limited and sometimes absurd, support systems feel unhelpful, and society’s expectations around motherhood add heavy pressure and isolation. These show up as part of the character’s lived experience and mental spiral, not as modern activist attacks on patriarchy, traditional roles, or Western institutions.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. This is an original story with no changes to established characters, canon, source material, or historical figures for identity reasons.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
No notable complaints or online pushback treat the film as pushing woke, DEI, or identity politics content. Talk stays on the stress level, acting, and raw motherhood portrayal.
Creator track record context
Director Mary Bronstein has a body of work making raw films about flawed women, female relationships, and motherhood struggles, plus academic feminist theory contributions that center women’s inner lives and visibility. Other key producers work mainly in character-driven indie film with occasional cultural or social stories but show no strong activist or identity-politics pattern.
Production
