A Fun But Familiar Story Of Making Yourself Over In 'Brittany Runs A Marathon'

Why would a person who has never been interested in running become a person who wants to run a marathon? Not why would she get more active, but why a marathon? That's the question that lingers at the edges of Brittany Runs a Marathon, a likable and upbeat comedy that never quite comes together as a story.

Based — pretty loosely, it appears — on the real-life story of a friend of writer-director (and stars Jillian Bell as Brittany. She's your basic unhappy and directionless 27-year-old, whose boring job taking tickets at a theater is about the best thing she has going. When a doctor tells her she needs to lose weight and get in shape, she starts eyeballing a neighbor (Michaela Watkins) who runs every day, and before you know it, she's putting on sneakers and running one block. And then a little farther, and then a little farther, and then she decides to run a marathon. Why? She likes running. That's about as much as the film can tell you. What you cannot get from a running montage in which Brittany looks progressively less miserable, it cannot explain.