Film Review: Brittany Runs a Marathon

Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Mature
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

I know I am late with this review, so this may be a bit on the brief side.

Brittany Runs a Marathon is the story of the title character Brittany (Jillian Bell).  She is overweight and parties too much.  She is constantly in the shadow of her more attractive roommate Gretchen (Alice Lee).  Brittany tries to drown her sadness in lowliness in drinking, drugs, and degrading sexual encounters in bathrooms.  She covers all of this with a sharp and dry wit that cracks wise at her situation.  However, a visit with a doctor (Patch Darragh) makes her feel terrible about her weight.  She decides to take up running, mainly because it is an exercise that does not cost money.  Along the way, she becomes friends with Seth, a gay man who wants to prove to his adopted child that he is not out of shape.  She also becomes friends with her judgmental neighbor Catherine (Michaela Watkins) as all three of them join the running group.  Together with her, Brittany starts to train to run the New York Marathon and prove her own self-worth.

One of the things that writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo captures so well is that first moment of decision.  Before her first run, Brittany pauses by the door.  Will she go through or not?  That choice is pivotal, but Colaizzo is able to capture visually that this choice has to be remade over and over again.  It is the same choice to go through that door for the first time as if you have never done it before.  Without the courage to try, no change will occur.

Bell gives a fantastic performance.  She is charismatic and funny.  Her physical transformation is only effective because we can see how it changes her as a character.  She gains confidence to the point of arrogance and obsession.  Brittany is a person of intense self-hatred who puts walls up just as people are getting closer.  Bell makes us believe her resistance to friendship and love while rooting for her to overcome them.  All the while she makes us laugh.

The script is a bit too vulgar and sometimes verges into nasty.  While the chemistry between the leads is good, it always feels like it just misses real human connection.  The movie suffers from the same problem that a movie like Don Jon does: it acknowledges that the characters need to grow, but it doesn't bring them to full enough maturity before the end.  For example, Brittany enters into an awkward friendship/romance with Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar).  Part of her arc is for her to grow into an adult relationship, but even by the end, she refuses to see how marriage is the ultimate goal of human romantic life.

This movie has some interesting things to say.  But eventually Brittany Runs a Marathon runs out of steam.