“Modern Life is Rubbish.” declared Blur with their seminal album way back in 1993. I wonder what they would say now, in our angst-ridden times where no-one and nothing rarely performs as it should. I always think that if 25% of your life is messy, that’s normal, and you can relax about it. If 25-50% is messy, then that warrants some consideration re improvement, and if more than half your life is messy, then you need to take action to sort it out. Linda’s (Rose Byrne) life is 90% chaos and she trips over one hurdle after another in director Queerguru’s Ris Fatah reviews ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ a dark comedy drama with Rose Byrne, Jessie Buckley, A$AP Rocky and Christian Slater. Mary Bronstein’s brilliant dark comedy drama, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

Linda lives in Montauk, NY, with her husband Charles (Christian Slater) and very sick young child. Her heard-but-not-seen child has an eating disorder and needs to be fed by a feeding tube alongside her normal food intake, in an attempt to gain weight. The feeding tube apparatus is cumbersome, restrictive, messy, and time-consuming. Charles is working away from home for eight weeks, so it’s left to Linda to manage the child’s illness, alongside her demanding full-time job nearby as a therapist with very needy clients. She already has enough on her plate when a huge flood at their apartment forces her and her daughter to move indefinitely into a local fleapit motel whilst repairs are slowly carried out.

What follows is a beautifully dark, funny, unpredictable and stressful time as the exhausted Linda, permanently on the edge of a nervous breakdown, deals with all the tiny paper cuts life can throw at you. These include annoying parking attendants, a very needy, selfish child, a demanding, micro-managing husband completely lacking in empathy, a jobs-worthy motel receptionist, an angry pet hamster, an absent builder, crazy therapy clients, an indifferent therapist of her own and unrealistic weight-gain targets set by passive-aggressive medical staff. Living with a very sick child alone in a motel room presents particular challenges, especially as she has no child care outside of school hours. She’s surrounded by people all the time, yet totally alone and no-one listens to her, an astute reflection of our times. Her only solace is in Jamie, (a very cute and charismatic A$AP Rocky), a maintenance man at the motel, who kinda has her back, sorts out drugs for her, and offers to babysit, although even their relationship also eventually descends into chaos.

Bronstein has created a film of our times. Rose Byrne has taken the role of a career and run with it, delivering a faultless performance that is sure to change her trajectory. Her co-stars also serve well, including Conan O’Brien as her jaded, uncaring business partner and therapist. Caroline and Stephen, two borderline psychotic therapist clients, are played to great effect by Danielle Macdonald and Daniel Zolghadri. Her hectoring child’s doctor Dr Spring (Mary Bronstein) adds to the mix as does the punky, indifferent, foul motel receptionist, Diana (Ivy Wolk). I’d like to have seen more of A$AP Rocky, but I guess he’s too nice and easy on the eye for such dark, stressful times. The remoteness of Montauk is the ideal setting for the isolation Linda feels. As well as an apt commentary on our times, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a wry observation on the reality of motherhood and the different levels of parental participation between many men and women. Not everyone is supposed to be a parent. The fatigued Linda doesn’t, however, help herself. She’s rude, flippant, impatient, and unsympathetic with almost everyone, but she’s so ground down by life without a break that that is almost acceptable. It’s a good reminder that having zero tolerance to the daily crap we have to deal with isn’t always the best strategy. You will either connect with Linda or walk away feeling so thankful that you aren’t Linda.   10/10

Very funny, dark entertainment. It’s an experience.