Brittany Runs a Marathon stars Jillian Bell as the title character, a funny, yet out-of-shape New Yorker who parties every night and whose life is a total mess. When her doctor tells her that she needs to start getting herself in shape and stop her late night ventures, she decides to run one block each day. This turns into a few more blocks, and before she knows it, she begins making it a habit to run every day, with her goal being to run the New York Marathon, as she begins to get her life on track.
One of the most crucial elements in any movie is, among other things, to have a strong lead character. And this movie seems to be fully aware of that, because this is, above all else, Jillian Bell’s movie. This is a movie designed for the audience to root for this underdog character to move up from rock bottom and to do what was previously impossible for her.
It starts off fairly strong, establishing just how funny and likable Brittany can be. She’s constantly cracking jokes at every chance she can get, even during gravely serious conversations. It’s a good opportunity for the highly underrated Jillian Bell to show off just how funny she really can be. These moments establish her having a strong personality and create a good foundation for the audience to get behind.
However, once she has her meeting with the doctor, the movie tosses aside any real meaningful character development and focuses nearly all of its efforts on Brittany’s one goal of running the marathon and that’s it. That quick-witted sense of humor she had in the first few scenes is rarely seen again, and she becomes super serious as she tries turning her life around. She never says anything really interesting here, and her “character development” is essentially just limited to her coming to the not-so-shocking realization that nearly all aspects of her previous lifestyle are not healthy for her.
Once it’s established that Brittany needs to get into shape, the rest of this movie becomes one giant motivational speech for this character, with really no other conflict. It’s a series of scenes of Brittany running with groups of people, with the supporting characters literally doing nothing else but give her pep talks while having no real personalities of their own, in the most literal interpretation of the term “supporting character” seen in a movie in quite some time.
There’s Brittany’s downstairs neighbor Catherine, played by Michaela Watkins, who starts off the movie at odds with Brittany, but quickly changes her tune the second Brittany begins running, and the two act as if they’re lifelong best friends. There’s her running friend Seth, played by Micah Stock, who’s mostly around to just remind both Brittany and the audience why he’s running the marathon and contributing nothing of interest beyond that. And there’s her brother-in-law Demetrius, played by a totally misused Lil Rel Howery, who is relegated to just phoning in every so often and telling Brittany how great of a job she’s doing, while maybe making an occasionally funny remark.
The only real character-based conflict comes in the form of Brittany’s only friend at the start of the movie Gretchen, played by Alice Lee, whose toxic behavior plays a big part in why Brittany is the way she is at the start of the movie. This is probably one of the only intriguing subplot of them all, though it’s really only summed up in about a handful of quick scenes in which Brittany comes to her senses about Gretchen and distances herself from her pretty hastily.
There’s also a storyline involving a slacker named Jern, played by Utkarsh Ambudkar, another under-developed supporting character who takes up residence in a house where Brittany dog-sits. They bicker pretty much from the start and there are plenty of pointless sequences showing these two just hanging around each other, arguing. It’s almost painfully obvious they’re being set up to eventually develop romantic feelings for each other. Not much is really learned about Jern other than that he’s lazy and has a quirky attitude, and it feels as if the movie feels obligated to just shoehorn in a romantic interest for Brittany as the icing on the “cliche cake.”
And all of this familiarity would be fine if anyone actually had anything interesting to say throughout this movie. There’s almost nothing unique about any of these characters’ exchanges. The more light-hearted material is definitely not funny, outside of a handful of quick exchanges, while the more serious material isn’t really anything compelling. The movie feels like a more polished version of a Lifetime movie, with sappy, cliched dialogue spoken as incredibly predictable plot point unfold.
Brittany Runs a Marathon’s heart is in the right place, but it’s so bogged down in its own cheesiness that it’s really difficult to not sit throughout without squirming just a bit. Jillian Bell is fine, but outside of a few solid exchanges, the movie really wastes her comedic potential, and instead dedicates an hour and a half to other characters literally just giving her motivational speeches that’s meant to pass as weighty dramatic dialogue. Its supporting characters are grossly undeveloped, its story drowns in familiarity, and it ultimately fails to really have any real charm of its own.
Recommendation: Avoid It
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