Brittany Runs a Marathon

Paul Downs Colaizzo's Brittany Runs a Marathon allows us to see something I've wanted to see for a very long time - Jillian Bell in a leading role.  She's been appearing in supporting roles for years in movies like 22 Jump Street, Goosebumps and Rough Night, and she has always been a stand out.  I've wanted to see a movie give her an opportunity to take on the lead for a very long time, and now that she has, the only question I have is why did it take so long?

As I have expected, Bell is wonderful here, but the movie is kind of wonderful also.  It's also very brave.  I say this because the movie allows Bell to create a complex and fully dimensional character.  Her Brittany Forglar is not always a nice person.  She can be rude, sharply critical of others (especially the one who remind her of herself and her own flaws), and can also be nasty to people who only want to help her.  She's also a slob, an alcoholic, and prone to taking bad advice from her roommate.  And yet, we like her, because this is a complex script by Colaizzo, as well as a complex performance from Bell.  The character of Brittany is based on the director's best friend, and there is a lot of honesty and hard truths on display.  There is also a lot of good in Brittany.  The movie shows us all sides, and by the end, we are cheering for her.  But before we do, the movie has more of an edge toward its main character than we might expect walking in.

Brittany is a 28-year-old woman who came to New York from Philadelphia in order to pursue her dream of writing commercial jingles.  Those dreams have obviously faded a long time ago, and now she lives a fairly low-energy existence where she stays up partying all night with her shallow roommate (Alice Lee), sleeps till past noon everyday, and constantly arrives late for her going nowhere job where she works at a bar in a tiny Off-Broadway theater.  Brittany frequently uses sarcasm and humor to hide what she's feeling about herself and her body image, neither of which she is proud of.  She's the kind of person who hates seeing what she's become, but pretends to just laugh it all off.

One day, she goes to an inexpensive doctor who has a good Yelp rating in the hopes of scoring some Adderall off of him.  However, the doctor turns out to be more concerned about her health, and how she is grossly overweight.  He recommends that she needs to lose 50 pounds and drastically change her lifestyle.  Brittany faces this news as she usually does, with flippant humor, but his words do manage to stick with her.  She decides to take up running, most likely because she sees one of her neighbors in her apartment building doing it all the time.  Brittany is initially very judgemental of the woman, and how her life seems to be all together.  However, as she gets to know this neighbor named Catherine (Michaela Watkins), she learns that she has her own problems as well, and a friendship slowly forms.

Brittany reluctantly joins Catherine's running club, where she meets Seth (Micah Stock), a man who wants to get in shape because his husband and him want to have more children, and Seth is afraid he doesn't have the energy in order to keep up.  Meeting these people allows Brittany to lower her defenses, and actually be honest with these new friends in her life.  She doesn't have to be sarcastic or funny, and she can be honest about what she really feels about herself.  She also eventually starts to see running as something more than something she has to do because of what the doctor said.  She eventually aims to try to run the New York City Marathon in the coming year, and begins training.  Along the way, she faces a lot of hard truths about herself and relationships when she strikes up a friendship and possible love interest with a dog-sitter named Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar).

Brittany Runs a Marathon obviously works as a comedic crowd pleaser.  The script is very funny and sharp, and Bell is not-surprisingly up to the challenge, and gives us one of the funnier performances of the year so far.  But, the movie also has so much more on its mind.  It truly explores all angles of the character, both the good and the bad.  There is a scene late in the film that is brave enough to almost make us hate the character when she goes off on a woman whom she sees so much of herself in, and she says some truly hurtful things.   The movie is also an effective drama that talks honestly about self image, and how other people see those who are overweight or obese.  We don't just learn a lot of hard truths about Brittany herself, but also society, and perhaps a little about ourselves and how we perceive others.

The movie is also kind of brilliant in how it handles its characters and relationships.  Brittany can often push people away, or be nasty to them, but we understand why they stick with her and like her.  She is afraid of creating relationships.  It's something a lot of people can relate to, including myself, if I must be honest.  Sometimes we get so wrapped up in ourselves and our faults, we become suspicious of the people who want to get close to us.  We think they are judging us, or pity us, or feel sorry for us.  We don't want to be seen as a charity case, so we push them away, no matter how good their intentions might be.  This movie explores that way of thinking, and it made me realize that we don't really see that in movies very often.  We get insecure heroes, sure, but seldom do they explore how that insecurity forms as effectively or as deeply as this.

Brittany Runs a Marathon is as funny and as strong as I hoped a movie featuring a lead performance by Jillian Bell would be, but it surprised me a lot with its hard-edged honesty.  This is a great little movie that opens up about something a lot of people are afraid to talk about.  That's part of what movies are for.  They put things on the screen about ourselves that we're afraid to talk about, and help us understand it better.  This is not just a great comedy, it's a quietly powerful movie too.

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