REVIEW: Brittany Runs a Marathon

By: Anna Erickson

It’s like your favorite brownie recipe. You pull the same ingredients out everytime to mix them together in the same way. You know what that brownie will taste like. Yet, the result is nonetheless delectable each time, and with Brittany Runs A Marathon, you’ll be inspired to burn off those calories afterwards, too.

Winning the 2019 Sundance Festival’s Audience Award, this film is undoubtedly a crowd pleaser as it offers a mix of all things familiar in a way that everyone will have a taste for. Based on the true story of director and writer Paul Down Colaizzo’s former roommate and friend, it features the transformation of a wayward and forlorn character named Brittany (Jillian Bell,) when a trip to the doctor reveals her obesity diagnosis, and that she consequently won’t be receiving the Adderall that she intended to score. While working in front of a small non-broadway theater, Brittany struggles with finding purpose and identity in the midst of her trivial job and nights spent in the club, and vows to transform her life with a goal of running the New York Marathon.

The film quickly steps into character roles that it seems every dramedy features, and all doing so in the backdrop of a modern New York City: the funny, yet privately insecure overweight one, the obliviously narcissistic roommate who “can’t do too much cardio or she’ll get too skinny,” a gay guy who befriends the main character, an endearingly irritating co-worker who inevitably turns out to be a love interest, and a sibling who has her life together in a glaringly obvious way. While it seems like we’ve seen all of these characters before, Colaizzo is purposeful in the way that he reveals a surprising amount of emotional depth from them. We learn that there is a lot going on behind the scenes in the lives of each person, bringing them together as they deal with their own personal demons.

One way that the film does step out of the expected is that unlike similar feel-good, motivational films, such as I Feel Pretty, in which Amy Schumer eventually finds satisfaction and confidence in herself without ever actually dropping pounds or changing her appearance, Brittany is empowered every time she steps on the scale and the number is a little lower. In this way, Colaizzo walks the fine line of promoting health while also remaining body-positive, but manages to do so gracefully. As she sheds the pounds, Brittany works on other aspects of her life and eventually jumps back into the dating scene, becomes a “serious” runner and pursues her dream career in jingle-writing for an advertising agency.

Her journey to a new and improved self is a bit of a marathon itself, inducing its fair share of setbacks where at times the finish line seems impossibly far away. Even though the featured impediments were probably foreseen by everyone in the theater, they ended up bringing some of the best elements of the movie to light. It’s the way the Colaizzo uses what could be an ordinary cliche to provide intense and even dark emotional depth in Brittany during what is her lowest point ever. In a bleak and uncomfortable scene, Brittany cruelly insults a woman who is more overweight than she ever was, projecting her own self-loathing in a heartbreaking way.

These small moments are where an incredible sense of reality comes into play, and they allow you to look past some of the average jokes and cheesy pre-race montage. In “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” we learn that first, no one can be happy until they are happy with themselves, and that second, the shittiness of life doesn’t exclude anyone. Most importantly, it allowed me to come to terms with the fact that you can’t really get around adding eggs and butter to your brownie mix (well, you can, but it’s simply not the same).