"Brittany Runs A Marathon" Review
(9/10)
Brittany Runs A Marathon is A fun ride, spiked with touching gravity, is not a shabby way to end the movie summer. Thanks to Jillian Bell, a comic force of nature with real dramatic chops, that's what you get in Brittany Runs a Marathon. Debut director Paul Downs Colaizzo, an acclaimed playwright who based the film on the experiences of his own best friend, doesn't build his sharply witty script for easy sitcom miracles that tie everything up in a neat Hollywood bow. For Brittany, and anyone who lives in the real world, self-improvement is all baby steps, and the same goes for the movie, which refuses to leave Brittany's demons unexplored. It's the backsliding that gets to the roots of her self-loathing. Bell and Colaizzo do it the hard way, creating a character to root for without glib shortcuts. When you cheer at the end, and you will, the laughs and the tears feel honest and richly earned. Yes, Brittany Runs a Marathon gets a little earnest at times, stopping just short of self-righteousness. But Bell is always there to pull us back. She is pure gold. The movie thrives in its detours. Brittany's self-doubt and full-on destructive self-loathing makes it a pretty harsh experience. For a while Bell and her character find themselves intriguingly at odds with their movie's inevitable running path. As Brittany's stock improves in the prying, judgy eyes of the world around her, she's stuck with a load of defense mechanisms and the rote psychological impulse to push people away, and treat every act of kindness as pity. Brittany Runs a Marathon might have been an advertisement for the benefits of weight loss or a simplistic ode to the joys of inner beauty. But instead, it's about how personal insecurity takes many forms, not all of which can be conquered, though maybe some of them can. And since we're all messed up in our own ways and just trying to do better, we might as well do it together, one mile at a time.
Brittany Runs A Marathon is A fun ride, spiked with touching gravity, is not a shabby way to end the movie summer. Thanks to Jillian Bell, a comic force of nature with real dramatic chops, that's what you get in Brittany Runs a Marathon. Debut director Paul Downs Colaizzo, an acclaimed playwright who based the film on the experiences of his own best friend, doesn't build his sharply witty script for easy sitcom miracles that tie everything up in a neat Hollywood bow. For Brittany, and anyone who lives in the real world, self-improvement is all baby steps, and the same goes for the movie, which refuses to leave Brittany's demons unexplored. It's the backsliding that gets to the roots of her self-loathing. Bell and Colaizzo do it the hard way, creating a character to root for without glib shortcuts. When you cheer at the end, and you will, the laughs and the tears feel honest and richly earned. Yes, Brittany Runs a Marathon gets a little earnest at times, stopping just short of self-righteousness. But Bell is always there to pull us back. She is pure gold. The movie thrives in its detours. Brittany's self-doubt and full-on destructive self-loathing makes it a pretty harsh experience. For a while Bell and her character find themselves intriguingly at odds with their movie's inevitable running path. As Brittany's stock improves in the prying, judgy eyes of the world around her, she's stuck with a load of defense mechanisms and the rote psychological impulse to push people away, and treat every act of kindness as pity. Brittany Runs a Marathon might have been an advertisement for the benefits of weight loss or a simplistic ode to the joys of inner beauty. But instead, it's about how personal insecurity takes many forms, not all of which can be conquered, though maybe some of them can. And since we're all messed up in our own ways and just trying to do better, we might as well do it together, one mile at a time.