Running can be addictive and all-consuming, which anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck next to a keen racer at a dinner party will know. It can also be hell on Earth for the unfit and unprepared, as this film’s Brittany (Bell) discovers. She’s a hard-partying underachiever who takes up the sport after a wake-up call visit to her doctor. The new hobby forces Brittany to confront some uncomfortable truths about herself in a film that can’t quite decide whether it’s a sort-of romcom or a quirky indie drama, and sometimes falls oddly between the two.
In the end it’s friendship she needs – whatever your feelings about jogging, you’ll end up rooting for that simple truth.
We start strong and rather punchy, as Brittany initially goes to the doctor in the hopes of scamming Adderall and is instead forced to confront her unhealthy lifestyle. She takes up running out of necessity, meeting new friends in Seth (Micah Stock), another beginner who wants to set a good example for his kids; and posh neighbour and experienced runner Catherine (Michaela Watkins). Brittany loses weight, gets a new job and has a bit of a flirtation with co-worker Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar) as her running improves. It’s all a little pat — running is neither as awful as Brittany finds it at first, nor is it the universal panacea it is suggested — but the detail of her growing competence is realistic, and Bell treads just the right line between unlikeably awful and sympathetically lost. Her internalised fat-phobia might be uncomfortable for some viewers, but it feels realistic to the character if not healthy in a wider sense.
Just as things seem a little too neat, Brittany proves that she can still be her own worst enemy, lashing out in all directions the moment that she hits a speed bump. In the end it’s friendship she needs, not merely fitness, to get her across the finish line. Whatever your feelings about jogging, you’ll end up rooting for that simple truth on race day.
