Long Distance
Long Distance
Run, Girl Run
January 27, 2020
Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019)
The most challenging part about training to run a marathon for the first time is not the running, it's the time. That's the thought from someone who has run a dozen marathons and who knows that the running is tough but finding the time to run all those miles is an even greater hurdle.
That is, of course, unless you start out seriously overweight or with a a disturbing lack of confidence and that's what afflicts Jillian Bell's character, Brittany, in the extremely and sometimes shockingly honest and funny film Brittany Runs a Marathon.
A quick question: How many movies have you seen that show a beautiful woman with a great body getting undressed? Probably a great many. Now ask yourself how many films you have seen that show an overweight woman partially nude. Or, for that matter, how many movies have there been which prominently show an overweight woman at all?
Brittany Runs a Marathon, and Jillian Bell, do not back down from showing us what so many of us look like. Many of us are overweight and most of us do not look especially great while mostly nude. And while it's surprising at first to see an imperfect body on the big screen it's also refreshing and necessary to convey the true struggle Brittany is going through as she decides to turn her life around lose a few pounds.
Jillian Bell is funny, her character is honest, and Brittany Runs a Marathon asks an essential question about runners without actually asking it: Are you running to something, or away from something? Bell's character, like most runners we suspect, is doing both. She wants a fresh start for her body, mind and spirit and wants others to not just see her differently but treat her differently, to not just believe that she can run 26.2 miles but to believe that she can be a better person.
And that's the lesson. Running a marathon doesn't make you a better person. Losing weight doesn't make you a better person. Wanting to be a better person, knowing you should be a better person and letting others help you is what makes you a better person.
This movie is funny, inspiring, accurate and painful especially in a scene in which all Brittany's bad traits come boiling up to the surface and she verbally attacks someone suddenly and without provocation and it makes for one of the most uncomfortable and surprising bits of film you are ever likely to see in a goofy comedy.
The screenplay and directing by Paul Downs Colaizzo put Jillian Bell, forgive us here, on a promising path throughout the whole movie and Bell is aided by lively supporting performances from Alice Lee who plays her roommate, Utkarsh Ambudkar, who is a genuine New York survivor and, most preciously, Michaela Watkins who we were delighted to see matched up with Bell again after their amazing work together in another exquisite comedy from last year, Sword of Trust.
We hope to see Bell and Watkins together a lot more often, running at their own pace. Laughing out loud. --TK
Monday, January 27, 2020