"Love in Limbo" is like an Australian take on "Porky's" or "Lemon Popsicle", only with slightly more engaging characters, and a less repulsive attitude to women.
The movie is set, of course, in the '50s. Why are these coming-of-age/sex comedies so often set in the youthful days of the filmmakers? Why don't they just set them in the modern day, and capture the youth market? There's not enough nostalgia value in this stuff to interest people who were teenagers in the '50s, even in the 1990s.
Anyway.
The protagonist in this film is an expert in sexual matters, but a virgin. He knows the words but not the music, as Groucho would say. Sex starved, he has devoted himself to the study of the act, but has no idea how to make it happen. There is much truth to this, and many people, young or old, can relate to having booksmarts, but no streetsmarts.
Ken Riddle, the protagonist, is even smart enough to make money off his obsession, producing pornographic drawings to sell to his peers in the days before Playboy, late-night films, SBS, and long before the internet.
His proclivity gets him in trouble, and he is expelled from school, so goes to work, where his supervisor is even more socially inept than he is: a Welshman by name of Arthur, who is played by Russell Crowe!
I have never seen Crowe in a role like this, and this is not surprising. He feels very strangely miscast. It is hard to believe that this movie came out AFTER "Romper Stomper"! Who the hell saw his terrifying portrayal of a psychopathic skinhead and thought, he's the man to play the priggish Welsh stick-in-the-mud who works in a clothing factory?
I can only assume the movie was cast or filmed before "Stomper".
Australian filmgoers may also recognize Martin Sachs, the guy who tried to steal the Super Mario voice actor's job in "Underbelly" (ugh), and the adorable Maya Stange as Ken Riddle's twin sister Ivy.
I have often felt that other countries' treatment of sex - especially in the awkward phase - is a lot more frank than America's, despite the perhaps literally infinite number of sex comedies that came out of there in the '80s (just try to watch them all).
This results in a more truthful, and even more erotic, experience.
Those American pics are made by adults, and yet seem to share the protagonists' attitude to sex.
Films like "Love in Limbo" are deeper, more knowing, and more empathetic.
If the film has another obvious flaw, however, it's in the double-miscasting of the protagonist, along with Crowe. I feel the movie would have benefited from a more charismatic lead actor.
