Bell is a winner in charmer of a tale about perseverance and acceptance
The saying goes that a journey begins with a single step, and there’s no one that’s truer for than Brittany, the heroine of the new dramedy Brittany Runs a Marathon. Jillian Bell, who plays Brittany, gives us a refreshingly complicated character who we alternately root for and are dismayed by, though we always empathize with her. With his first feature film, writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo has made a well-crafted tale about conquering your fears, achieving your goals, and never giving up on your dreams that somehow doesn’t feel corny or contrived, but only honest, smart, and funny.
When the film opens, Bell’s Brittany is coasting through life, pushing 30, but still sleeping past noon, drinking too much, partying hard, and smoothing over being late for work with jokes and funny voices. When her friends tell her she’ll always be the “funny one” of the group, though, Brittany’s briefly pained look gives us our first inkling that perhaps she isn’t totally happy with the way her life is going. A visit to a doctor, who tells the 5’6, 197-pound Brittany that she could stand to lose a significant amount of weight for the sake of her health, shakes Brittany out of her stupor, even as she tells the doc, “I think you totally missed the point of those Dove ads.” Bell’s sardonic delivery of Colaizzo’s sharp words permeate the picture, and is one of its great strengths.
Thus we come to that always difficult but much needed first step. Brittany, after realizing a gym isn’t for her (thanks to a very funny scene with Saturday Night Live’s Mikey Day as the gym’s dumbfounded manager), decides to take up running. Colaizzo films Brittany, filled with trepidation, pushing open the door to her dingy Astoria apartment building and grimacing as she looks down the street. “One block,” she tells herself, as she maneuvers past strollers, pedestrians, and what she perceives to be the judgmental look of a hot dog vendor. We’ve all been there, and we feel Brittany’s fear, knowing she’d rather be home eating junk food and watching TV. But she makes that first block, and soon she’s joined a runner’s group with Catherine (Michaela Watkins), a neighbor whose life isn’t as ideal as Brittany seems to think. With Seth (Micah Stock), another new friend, in tow, the trio decides to train for the 26-mile New York City marathon.
What happens next, of course, is unpredictable and filled with highs and lows – just like life. What Colaizzo does well here is show us that for every step forward toward a goal, there’s also an inevitable step backward. How Brittany handles these setbacks isn’t always pretty, but is always realistic. A scene in which Brittany, back sliding from her new healthy regime in a moment of drunken self-pity, is shockingly cruel to an overweight friend of her beloved brother-in-law (Lil Rel Howery) is cringe-inducing and horrible to watch, but also allows us to viscerally experience Brittany’s struggle with insecurity and self-doubt.
Two other characters provide conduits for Colaizzo’s theme that often what people present on the surface may be just a façade. Everyone has problems, Colaizzo’s film tells us, and we need to learn to see past brave faces to the person hurting inside, and reach out, even when we get push back. Brittany’s narcissistic roommate Gretchen (Alice Lee) is consumed by her social media image, and her belittling of Brittany’s newfound goals is chilling in its callousness. “If I do too much cardio, I get too skinny too quickly,” Gretchen tells Brittany when Brittany suggests running together. Yet Gretchen, too, is dealing with her own distress. And Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar), a seemingly arrogant slacker who Brittany meets at a housesitting gig, has his own long-suppressed dreams. Ambudkar and Bell have terrific chemistry, and the thawing of Jern and Brittany’s initially hostile relationship, as they slowly reveal their true selves to each other and allow each other in, is portrayed with sensitivity and humor.
Brittany Runs a Marathon was nominated for the Grand Jury prize at Sundance this year, and took home the Audience Award. That it would win that particular honor makes sense, as the term “crowd pleaser” was made for this picture. We can’t be our best selves 100% of the time, Colaizzo acknowledges here, but by learning to gracefully accept support from our friends and family, we can take the first step in our journey to becoming the person we really want to be — inside, and out.
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Brittany Runs a Marathon opens today at Bay Area theaters. NOTE: Actress Jillian Bell will be at the Landmark Embarcadero Cinema in San Francisco tonight, Friday, Aug. 30th, for Q&As at the 7:00pm and 7:30pm screenings.
