Results

by Joseph Houlihan

Results, directed by Andrew Bujalski, wades into the manic world of fitness and self-help. Cobie Smulders stars, as Kat, a high intensity trainer who knows how to get…results. Kevin Corrigan is the schlubby parvenu looking for meaning that takes her on as a trainer, and Guy Pearce, the owner of the gym Power 4 Life, dedicated to his client’s physical, emotional mental, and spiritual well being.

MSPIFF
Friday, April 17, 9:50pm
Tuesday, April 21, 7:15pm

Director: Andrew Bujalski
Producers: Paul Bernon, Houston King, Sam Slater
Writer: Andrew Bujalski
Cinematographer:  Matthias Grunsky
Editor: Robin Schwartz
Cast: Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, Kevin Corrigan, Giovanni Ribisi, Brooklyn Decker, Anthony Michael Hall, Tishuan Scott

Runtime: 105m.
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
Premiere: January 27, 2015 – Sundance Film Festival

Casting can provide some of greatest pleasures in cinema. Veteran actors evoke old friends, in slidings that sometimes trend towards exploitation and a fluttering heart. Cobie Smulders is irresistible and terrible, effusing manic energy. She’s an actor at the top of her game, and it’s a pleasure to see her own this film. But it’s also just so good to see Guy Pearce back in the role of “Traditional Leading Man.” True his character is quirky, he obsesses over kettlebells and shares the bed of his mobile home with a large charismatic pooch, but he’s blazing on full movie star wattage. The singular Kevin Corrigan gives him a run for the money in the charisma department, stealing every scene he’s in, (he of Goodfellas, and The Departed, and “The Ugly Guy,” from Walking and Talking fame). But that’s not all. Giovanni Ribisi (a Joyless Creature favorite) plays a stoner commercial lawyer conveying bad news, and major plot developments, with his mouth full of breakfast taco, and Anthony Michael Hall rounds out the film as a Russian kettlebell celebrity and fitness pioneer.

As far as satire is concerned, the fitness industrial complex is a pretty wide target. And the actors almost half-apologize as they endlessly squat and stretch and swig juice, protein shakes and bottled water in constant motion. At times Results evokes the Coen Brother’s Burn After Reading, but unlike that film, Results never goes nasty.  It catches some of the complexity of better mumblecores, without digressing too far from a pretty standard Hollywood plot. And like a well-blended kale smoothie, it goes down easy.