Movie Review: Brittany Runs a Marathon

Brittany Runs a Marathon *** / *****

Directed by: Paul Downs Colaizzo.   

Written by: Paul Downs Colaizzo.

Starring: Jillian Bell (Brittany), Michaela Watkins (Catherine), Utkarsh Ambudkar (Jern), Lil Rel Howery (Demetrius), Micah Stock (Seth), Alice Lee (Gretchen), Patch Darragh (Doctor Falloway), Mikey Day (Dev). 

 

If I told you that the basic outline of Brittany Runs a Marathon is that an overweight, underachieving New York based woman decides to get her life in order by training to run the New York Marathon, you would likely think that the film is yet another Sundance film designed to illicit both cheers and tears. To a certain extent, all of that is true (including the Sundance part) – and yet Brittany Runs a Marathon earns those cheers and those tears because the lead character is more than just a sum of feel-good clichés. Played by Jillian Bell, who up until now has specialized in stealing movies in small supporting roles, Brittany is a jumble of contradictions – and isn’t always the easiest protagonist to like or cheer for. But Bell is so winning in the title role – so funny, and yet so real, that even when she does things that are impossible to approve you, you root for her anyway. The film does hit many of those clichés – but because the lead character is so well written and performed, you forgive it that, and go along for the ride.

 

In the film, Bell plays a New York based would be writer, who cannot seem to get out of her own way. She doesn’t really have a job or any real prospects. She has one friend – but they bond mostly over their desire to go drinking during the week, and the limits of that friendship come into sharp focus when Brittany decides to better herself. Brittany knows she is overweight, knows she doesn’t have much going on, is 30, and in listless. Through a series of convenient plot developments, she starts running – joins a running group, makes new friends, develops a love interest – Jern (Utkarsh Amdudkar) – and becomes determined to run in the New York Marathon. It isn’t an easy journey.

 

Bell is always a delightful presence is movies – but mostly she has been used for comic relief – a blunt truth teller who puts everyone else in their place, and then moves on. Here, Bell still gets the chance to be funny – she delivers one-liners as good as anyone – but she also gets to delve deeper into a thorny character. Brittany is s spiky character – she uses those spikes to keep people at a distance, and it masks deep insecurities. Those insecurities never really go away in the movie either. The movie isn’t offering this journey as a kind of band aid to fix everything in her life, nor will simply getting in shape make her a better, happier, more secure person. They just come out in different ways. Brittany does go through a physical transformation in the film – Bell apparently lost 40 pounds for the film – but that doesn’t make her a better person. She has to become secure in the person she is for that to happen.

 

The film that surrounds Bell isn’t as good as she is. The supporting characters never really become anything more that types, and attempts to make them more complex than that don’t really work, as they aren’t given enough time to breath. An “inspirational” letter that Bell receives late in the film after an inappropriate meltdown at a barbecue, seems out of place – like the film wanted to get all that information in somehow, and couldn’t find a more natural way for it to happen.

 

Still, Bell is enough. She makes Brittany into, yes, an inspirational and aspirational character – but doesn’t pretend that simply losing some weight and running a race is a cure all. It’s all just a little more complicated than that – and it makes the film.