BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON

R, 103 minutes. Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Madison Art Cinemas. It’s not often that your best friend writes and directs their debut feature film about you, but Brittany O’Neill’s mental and physical transformation inspired her friend/writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo to make “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” a drama disguised as a comedy about the hard work of changing yourself. Comedian Jillian Bell steps into her first starring role as the funny, frumpy Brittany, a New York City party girl/slacker whose body can’t keep up with her arty all day/ sleep all night routine (Bell also produced the film). Under doctor’s orders, she hits the pavement in search of salvation. And along the way, she finds herself. The ending is right there in the title, but Colaizzo’s film leans into the old adage that it’s all about the journey, not the destination, following the achingly hard work of Brittany’s trek toward the finish line of the New York City Marathon, and ultimately, toward happiness. Brittany’s problems aren’t unique, and they aren’t insurmountable, but they aren’t easy. She’s got a lame job, flounders in her love life, grieves the loss of her father and has high blood pressure to boot. Living with a wannabe influencer, Gretchen (Alice Lee), isn’t the best influence either. But for all her external problems, the highest mountain Brittany has to climb is getting over herself, a struggle Bell makes poignantly, piercingly real in her performance and that takes the film into its darkest yet most relatable moments. To anyone who can relate to Brittany’s predicament of feeling stuck and depressed, this may all sound familiar. She’s unable and unwilling to receive and accept help and love from her loved ones, so she wallows in her own bad thoughts and negative spirals. During a particularly