Semi-droll, low-impact film fails to shed the flab

Results

is the latest from "mumblecore" director Andrew Bujalski, whose famously laid-back style shows signs in this movie of becoming fully reclined.

Results seems interested in one day becoming a comedy, and in a few scenes, manages to muster enough energy to be described as droll.

For the most part, though, it's a slouching story of two or three people (the movie is characteristically indecisive on this point) contending with the forces of love. Or maybe it's inertia.

They are: Trevor (Guy Pearce), proprietor of a successful exercise franchise in Austin, Texas, where he sometimes sleeps with prickly trainer Kat (Cobie Smulders), now assigned to a flabby and wealthy new client named Danny (Kevin Corrigan).

Danny is as committed to fitness as Trevor and Kat are to each other, which is to say, not very. When Kat advises Danny to keep a food diary, he takes pictures of his pizza and sends them along via Instagram.

Danny makes a halfhearted attempt to master squats, Kat makes a halfhearted attempt to teach them, and soon they're spending their session times gabbing, smoking, drinking. Danny is newly divorced and clearly interested in the younger, fitter Kat, and when she realizes this, she takes umbrage - she's out of his league and didn't think she needed to spell it out.

Corrigan is a good match for the lazy rhythms and meandering of Bujalski's style. He manages to make Danny - sitting on a new inheritance, adrift in Austin with money and no friends - a scruffily likable character.

Less compelling are Trevor and Kat. We don't feel much chemistry there. Trevor's got his nose in his business, and it's a silly one. He claims to offer a life-altering fitness regimen to his clients, but we don't see any altered lives.

Kat, for her part, seems to want some kind of gesture from Trevor, but she also seems to want everybody around her to scram. She somehow charms Danny and Trevor, but you may find yourself immune.

Claims have been made that Results is a meaningful look at life in our new contract-employee service economy, but if that's the actual purpose of Results, it's as poorly realized as everything else in the movie, which fades from memory in an instant.

All except for the vintage poster of Philadelphia boxer Joey Giardello in Trevor's office.

Directed by Andrew Bujalski. With Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders,

Kevin Corrigan, Giovanni Ribisi. Distributed by Magnolia Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating.

Playing at: Ritz Bourse.

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