Half of this movie has Rose Byrne excelling, while the other half is too stressful.

There’s a lot of critics who might see “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” a lot better than I could. I acknowledge that this A24 release deals with the stress of motherhood, and the performances are great, but at the end of the day, it felt too much for me to process and acknowledge.

Rose Byrne plays Linda, a therapist, who has a lot on her plate. Her daughter has an illness which requires a feeding tube and an off-screen appearance (we only see her at the end-why-I don’t know). Their apartment gets flooded because of a big hole in the ceiling, so they’re both stuck in a motel. Her husband Charles (Christian Slater) is away on business. Her client Caroline (Danielle Mcdonald) is a lousy mother who abandons her baby during their appointment. And she visits her supervisor and colleague (Conan O’Brien), who is so unfazed by her problems, that he ends up cutting ties with her.

A$AP Rocky, who did a great job this year in “Highest 2 Lowest,” plays her motel neighbor and superintendent named James. He tries to help her out with some of her problems-like a jerky clerk (Ivy Wolk) who won’t let her buy alcohol after 2 AM (it’s 1:58 AM)-but there are also times when she treats him like a creep. When she does really need his help, he ends up being injured in the process.

I apologize for calling a sick girl “bratty,” but she does act like a brat. She wants a hamster (which has to be run over by an ongoing car), she annoys her about her pizza having cheese (which ultimately gets pulled off when the box flips over), and she needs her mother to walk her inside to her sessions, which constantly gets Linda parking issues. The one thing we can agree on with this girl is the opening scene when she says her mother is like putty. It’s all about how she reacts to things and deals with them. And there are scenes when Linda looks at the ceiling hole and ends up in a void, where we hear frantic noises, including the daughter not wanting a feeding tube. It is an A24 movie, so what did we really expect?

Aside from her comedic work (“Bridesmaids,” “Neighbors,” etc.), Bryne has been in several dark films before like “Insidious” or “28 Weeks Later.” But in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” she delivers an exceptional and thought-provoking performance as a mother who is so stressed that she lashes out at people who scold her choices. I would have loved the movie better without the daughter acting so demanding, because they seem so exhausting and arbitrary for a movie with a subplot regarding a sick child.

Besides Byrne, O’Brien makes an impressive dramatic turn as probably the most uncaring therapist in the world (and maybe somebody should fire this guy), and Slater and Rocky both deliver the right dialogue when they respectively argue with Byrne. All these guys argue with her, and they’re given realism by writer/director Mary Bronstein, who seems to be channeling something in this genre.

Now, this is the part where you’re saying: “If you love the performances,” then you should love the movie.” But this is too much for me to handle. Mothers do get hurried, and maybe that’s what this movie wanted to explore in the twisted genre. But the daughter’s behavior and some of the other elements like the jerky clerk wear out of their welcome. I may not be a parent, but I do deal with stress in my reality. So I can try to sympathize with Linda about her troubles, but I can’t really do the same about some of her decisions.

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