Zach Gregger, center, and Brian McGuire in Love & Air Sex (Tribeca Film)

Though its title implies 90 minutes of raunchy, ball-busting mayhem, Love & Air Sex emerges as more of a complaisant, if mostly unmemorable, ode to young love, set in scorched, neon-lit Austin, Texas. Spiteful breakups, lingering make-ups, meet-cutes, love triangles, aching texts, vengeful sexts, and an X-rated air sex competition all permeate director Bryan Poyser’s follow-up to his Independent Spirit Award nominee, Lovers of Hate. The film aims to proffer insight into the decisions made by 20-somethings in the name of love and how those decisions are often pitted against the conclusions made for them by grown-up demands. Instead, Poyser’s film unfolds as a frenzied exhibition of post-grad arrested development.

An effective opening credits montage, set to romping rock melody, “Let’s Go Young” by the Austin-based band Hundred Visions (look them up!), catches us up on the status of two of our lovelorn leads. Stan (Michael Stahl-David, from Cloverfield), an LA-based aspiring filmmaker, and Cathy (a blushingly radiant Ashley Bell), a med student at NYU, were once googly-eyed undergrad sweethearts, cavorting around their beloved southwestern city with indefatigable naiveté. Through a series of Instagram photos and Skype screenshots, we watch as the young lovers bond and blend before ultimately breaking up due to East Coast/West Coast long distance. The formation of their relationship is so effortless and “meant to be” that viewers are inclined from the outset to root for the estranged couple. And then… comes the air sex.

Well, not quite yet. Before plummeting into the realm of madcap crudity that is air sex, the plot embroils as Cathy and Stan arrive separately in Austin—she, to visit her best friend, Kara (Sara Paxton, The Innkeepers); he, on a last-minute whim, instigated by Cathy’s Austin-bound Facebook status. Stan crashes with his buddy, Jeff (The Whitest Kids U’ Know‘s Zach Cregger), and we quickly learn that Jeff and Kara—the other couple in the head-banging opening credits sequence—have also separated, but on much more hostile and vindictive terms.

As the film unfurls, the four misguided friends retrace their formerly well-worn tracks, returning to old hotspots like the Alamo Drafthouse cinema, each navigating painful paths of the past while anticipating a dimly lit future. And while the film lingers a bit longer on the boys’ exploits, in the end Love & Air Sex is really all about the ladies.

Bell, her soft features recalling a younger Kirsten Dunst mixed with Glee’s Jayma Mays, is a wide-eyed star on the rise. She portrays Cathy as hard-working but also ingenuous, her eyes indicating longing without seeming pitiful. And Sara Paxton, who bears the hazily recognizable traits of her former child star life, asserts herself as a formative, unselfconscious adult actress, and for the most part, we buy it. Her salacious sex talks and man-hunting methods are puerile, but, at the same time, we chuckle at the asininity of her circumstances.

The film loses its footing when it forgets how to ground its characters into the spectacular now. Critical life decisions are founded via social media, and yet at times, it feels as though the director forgets which decade he’s in. Poyser inserts a scene where Stan and Jeff count down to the deletion of their ex’s numbers from their cell phones, symbolic of this fitful generation. No one bothers to learn phone numbers anymore, even those belonging to significant others. But then if these four are so immersed in the contemporary era of absentmindedness, why are they also making references to The Jeffersons? Or when encountering new love prospects, is it very realistic for them to compare other 20-somethings to Jon Voight and Goldie Hawn? Poyser loses us here, meandering into the cinematic depths of the Drafthouse when all of the worthy action takes place during the sidewalk conversations.

That’s right, the air sex competition, which takes place inside the Drafthouse cinema, is ultimately nothing more than a lewd, glorified air guitar contest, only instead of faux-strumming guitar strings, the contenders are fake-fingering, well, you know… Stan, Jeff, and two of their cohorts enter this absurd simulated sex tournament, and what could have subsisted as a comical aside becomes a focal plot point without much gratification.

Because the film tries to go there without fully committing to rounding the bases, the air sex aspect feels more like a throwaway rather than an evincing metaphor for the empty, erratic paths of post-grad life. Which I think is what Poyser is trying to say here, right? Or maybe it’s just an excuse for some madcap raunchiness, in which case, the title certainly earns its place. If only the film had focused less on lip licking and tongue twisting and more on the words emitting from said orifices, Love & Air Sex might have actually had something to say.