90% of you admit to it and the other 10% lie about it. Yes, YOU m********e, c’mon, admit it. This sticky subject is fully, and I really mean fully explored in director Gregor’s first feature film “The Trouble with Lou.” Shot in stark black and white, the story is explained to us by a narrator in the style of a 1950s ephemeral film. This mockumentary introduces us to Lou Romano. He’s an average teen growing up in your typical gentrified suburban fifties neighborhood. The trouble: dunh, dunh, DUUUUUUHHH – he’s a chronic masturbator! In fact, Lou’s life revolves around the various creams, lotions and lubricants that call out to him from the medicine chest to choke the chicken. And choke he does, jerking off virtually every free second.
In an effort to wean himself from the activity dominating his life, he seeks out a girlfriend in the lovely Margaret, and to impress her, he partakes in high school sports. In the midst of wielding sizable phallic symbols, he actually ditches Margaret in the middle of a date to jack off. Lou’s parents sense trouble and commit him to an institution for others with the same affliction. It is here that he finds comfort in Rebecca, a saucy woman who reveals the art of female self-stimulation to Lou. The two break out of the institution in perfect fifties juvenile delinquent style. Together they begin a romance involving separate beds, and masturbation utilizing virtually every object possible – corn oil, cucumbers, corn, logs, you name it.
As someone who knows this subject all too well, both in the past as a teen and as an adult in the present, I have conquered the beast and come to terms with my issues involving self love. But it wasn’t easy. I can tell you that you may laugh at those jokes in “Lou,” but the urge to flog the bishop can take over one’s life. Frequent wanking is a problem that for many, is all too real. I’m man enough to admit that masturbation has had its grip, so to speak, on my life and during certain periods. It has certainly been a distraction that can dominate a person. (Uh, yeah, me.) But with a healthy attitude toward spanking the monkey, one can engage in real love, you know, with another person. And that once a week, day, whatever, jerk-off break, can come without destructive guilt.
For fans of those obscurely funny ephemeral films, “The Trouble with Lou” delivers loads of laughs. And loads of, well, you know.
