Kinsey (2004)

Kinsey: 2004, dir. Bill Condon. Seen at Paramount (Feb. 20).
Kinsey is not a movie about sex. Kinsey is a movie about nerds.
My boyfriend pointed this out after we saw the movie. He noted how refreshing it was to see a movie in which the main character, with whom we are sympathizing and identifying, is a nerd. And a geek. He gets more excited about the lifespan of the gall wasp than anything else.
I have to say I like the nerdy parts of this movie, and of the character, much better than the sex parts. And no, I am not a prude.

(Although the scene where Peter Sarsgaard takes off his clothes in the hotel room, and so forth, was pretty hot. At least to me—I know some people with differing opinions.)
Liam Neeson was appropriately convincing as Dr. Kinsey, aka Prok. Laura Linney managed to take a standard supportive-wife role and raise it into something more charming and interesting than expected.
One problem I had was that the three assistants—Sarsgaard, Chris O’Donnell, and Timothy Hutton—were practically indistinguishable. It was a good thing Hutton’s character had that little mustache or I would have been even more confused. There were scenes were either Sarsgaard or O’Donnell were in the background, and if you weren’t paying very close attention, you couldn’t tell which was which.
But in the scenes where Sarsgaard wasn’t with the other assistants, where he is interacting with Neeson or Linney, he does a wonderful job. Very subtle, very convincing, slightly hot. He was the one actor I admired in Shattered Glass and I hope to see more of him. I mean, ahem, we saw all of him there was to see in Kinsey, but I would like to see him in more movies.
The supporting cast was a lot of fun. It was nice to see Oliver Platt as the university president, and Tim Curry was cast waaaay against type as the conservative, abstinence-promoting professor. (It’s risky to cast like that, because when Curry’s character is lecturing on the evils of masturbation, all I could think about was Dr. Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror. And I know I wasn’t the only one. But it was funny and didn’t distract overmuch from the movie, so it worked.) Lynn Redgrave has a lovely little role in a scene at the end of the movie.
(Hey, can anyone else remember the other movie with Oliver Platt, Chris O’Donnell, and Tim Curry in it? Hee.)
I did not find Kinsey particularly memorable, but it was enjoyable to watch. Sometimes it was a bit heavy-handed, as when it drew parallels between Kinsey and his preacher father (excellently played by John Lithgow, by the way). I did like the scenes with young Kinsey exploring nature, though.
I was disappointed in the very traditional biopic structure of the movie. The character finds the big thing in life he’s supposed to do, he succeeds at first, he runs into obstacles, suddenly he’s vilified, but at the end he realizes his life is a success in many ways and is happy again. How many biographical films have we seen like that? The problem with this structure is that it makes me doubt the facts behind the film. Did Kinsey’s life fit into this pattern as neatly as it does in this movie? I doubt it. What really happened, I wonder? How much of this story is an invention?
Also, I was confused about timelines. The characters don’t all age consistently, and it is often difficult to tell how much time has passed or what year it is. In movies like this, which span a long period of time, I am always wishing for some cheesy shot of a calendar on the wall, or a newspaper with the year prominently displayed in the corner, or some other way to figure out the year. I had the same problem with Seabiscuit.
Even with these difficulties, I recommend seeing Kinsey, particularly if you like watching movies that are sympathetic towards nerdy types. It would be a very good DVD rental.
Now I am curious to see Gods and Monsters, an earlier film also written and directed by Bill Condon, which is a biography of director James Whale. I actually rented this movie and then never had time to sit down and watch it. But I would be curious to see if it followed a similar structure, and if there are other similarities to Kinsey.
And I also would like to read T.C. Boyle’s book The Inner Circle, a novel about Kinsey and his staff (I liked The Road to Wellville).