BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON Is Charming from Start to Finish - Sundance Review

I was really skeptical going into this movie. All I knew about it was that a fat girl attempts to get in shape. If that doesn’t sound great to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. But I’m so glad I gave this movie a chance. It was hilarious!

Brittany Runs a Marathon is the story of a girl named Brittany who, due to health concerns after going to a doctor to try to get a prescription for Adderall, decides to start running and changing her poor lifestyle choices. As a goal, she decides she wants to run the New York Marathon, something most of us would never dream of doing.

This could easily become really cheesy, but Jillian Bell, who plays Brittany, is so funny. It’s hard not to compare her to Amy Schumer because they look similar and are both what one might call “average” women, but Jillian Bell is everything Schumer tries (and fails) to be. She’s funny, but most importantly, she’s not in-your-face with how real she is. And that really comes through in her character.

Brittany also has a really great support system, one of them being her brother in-law, played by Lil Rel Howery. The writing is so great, and I loved seeing these different characters play off each other. The balance between comedy and emotion is wonderfully done.

This movie works because it represents all of us average people and our struggle to live our best life, not necessarily by having the most fun, but by finding something that feels meaningful. I also loved that Brittany is based on a real person the writer/director knew from college.