Kinsey Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)November 13th, 2004
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It doesn't have the show-stopping performance of Ray's Jamie Foxx, or the overall cohesiveness of Finding Neverland, but as far as biopics go, Kinsey is slightly better than typical year-end mush we're used to seeing in theatres. It might have the all too familiar trajectory of a VH-1 Behind the Music feature, but Kinsey earns points for dropping the curtain before its protagonist sleeps with the fishes (but, sadly, not before he punctures his foreskin for fun - don't ask about that, either).
No stranger to period films about alternative sexual lifestyles, writer-director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) frames the majority of Kinsey's scenes with very attractive black-and-white scenes of Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson, Love Actually) being given a fairly detailed questionnaire about his sexual history. The catch is that the questionnaire was developed by Alfred for his groundbreaking research of what went on between the sheets in 1940s America, but Condon uses it as a plot device to show the eponymous figure's life in a series of flashbacks. Flashbacks? In a biopic? Truly
groundbreaking.
Alfred, the prototypical science square, started his studies with the slightly less sexy gall wasp before moving on to human beings, portrayed here as a bunch of uptight Puritans whose little knowledge of self and mutual gratification has come from frightening classroom films that promise permanent disfigurement if you even think about touching yourself that way (insert joke about how things really haven't changed much if you live in a red state). He does some research. He gets lots of attention when he releases his findings in the popular book-slash-atom bomb Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Then, he starts getting some serious backlash. And then Kinsey abruptly ends, a victim of trying to cram too much story into a two-hour film.
I'm no big fan of Neeson, who I find rather one-dimensional in a Denzel Washington kind of way (he's the same in every role), but Kinsey's stellar supporting cast more than makes up for his dullness. Laura Linney (p.s.) crackles as Alfred's understanding wife, and Peter Sarsgaard (Garden State) logs in another impressive turn as the more interesting of Alfred's three assistants.
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