As a student of zoology, you could say I've become quite the expert on the behaviour variously euphemised as "horizontal jogging," "making the beast with two backs," or by dystopian droogs as "the old in-out in- out." Well, Alfred Kinsey was even more expert than me. In the famously prudish decades of the 1940s and 50s, the entomologist at Indiana University (played here by Liam Neeson) realised that the taboo subject of human sexuality was essentially unexplored by modern science, and set out to rectify this situation. The products of his labours, known as the Kinsey Reports ("Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953)) were immediate popular sensations, arousing admiration and condemnation in equal volume.
An ensemble cast (including Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, and Tim Curry) do very well with what they're given, and it's a fascinating story being told, but the screenplay itself is all over the place. A few scenes are dedicated to Kinsey's family life, but then the children are never heard from again. There's a rather awful graphic montage that is supposed to represent Kinsey's team interviewing subjects all over America. This is all made up for, perhaps, by a very touching sequence near the end, in which an interviewee (played by Lynn Redgrave) thanks Kinsey for saving her life through his research. Worth watching, because anything with Liam Neeson is worth watching.
An ensemble cast (including Neeson, Laura Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, and Tim Curry) do very well with what they're given, and it's a fascinating story being told, but the screenplay itself is all over the place. A few scenes are dedicated to Kinsey's family life, but then the children are never heard from again. There's a rather awful graphic montage that is supposed to represent Kinsey's team interviewing subjects all over America. This is all made up for, perhaps, by a very touching sequence near the end, in which an interviewee (played by Lynn Redgrave) thanks Kinsey for saving her life through his research. Worth watching, because anything with Liam Neeson is worth watching.