This was good- interesting. I thought Liam Neeson was excellent, as was the entire cast (Peter Sarsgaard, Chris O'Donnell, John Lithgow, Oliver Platt, Timothy Hutton) which also includes an Oscar nomination for Laura Linney as Kinsey's freethinking wife.The movie is provocative and intelligent, scientific not sexy and will make you laugh but also squirm at times and wonder how Alfred Kinsey ever managed to get his book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" published at a time (1948) when sex was generally misunderstood and very taboo. Everyone seemed to be asking "am I normal?".Using the technique of his own famous sex interviews, the movie uncovers the secrets of a nation while recounting the scientist's extraordinary journey from oppressed obscurity to pioneer in the area of human research, to global fame. Kinsey was responsible for the start of the sexual revolution, changed American culture and created a media sensation with his book -before they turned on him. 11/23/14

The sexual revolution as we know it got jump started by the man whom this film is about. Alfred Kinsey may not have been the first man to study sex in the abstract, but he certainly was the first man who became widely popular for doing so.No doubt his interest in sex was a product of his reaction to his Puritan like father John Lithgow who has made roles like the senior Kinsey a real treat ever since his portrayal as a fundamentalist reverend in Footloose. What kid hasn't wanted to explore forbidden knowledge after some religious authority told them it was a no-no. All that Kinsey did was explore far more than others had done and published his controversial findings.Liam Neeson plays Alfred Kinsey the patient researcher and biologist who did nothing less than revolutionize traditional mores to their foundation. His portrayal is restrained and dignified. Not really gone into is the fact that Kinsey was bisexual and did have a relationship with the character that Timothy Hutton plays.Not so with Laura Linney who gained an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as Mrs. Kinsey. Off the bat she tells him she believes in free love and proves it with Chris O'Donnell while married to Neeson. He's not minding at all though, the work comes first with him.Linney is the one you'll most remember, but Neeson and the rest give spirited performances and breathe life into the father of the sexual revolution for the silver screen.

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.

Like also bold was the research done by the man who worked out these reports on the sexual behavior of men and women which made a revolution in the till then established knowledge and the common social and individual convictions on such matters. To withdraw sex out of the pure scope of morals and religion and turning it as an object of scientific research was a task which offended lots of prejudices and cleared up preconceived notions and ideas, contributing in a certain way to the liberation mainly of the women as victims of such prejudices. Of course you can raise here the question -- and this is not missing in the movie -- of knowing if sexual activity is purely physical or it must also involve sentiments and obey to moral rules. But this is a movie review and not a moral essay. That question is legitimate but its discussion is absent of this review because it goes beyond what a movie review is supposed to be. This movie, in its biographical aspect, tells us in astonishingly good way the work of Alfred Kinsey and his struggle to reach the aimed goal of a purely scientific nature, of revealing what actually happens in the human sexual activity and behavior disregarding of moral patterns and also of the common wrong knowledge about it. Its true knowledge would then enable sexologists to establish rules that would allow voluntary and free sex to become a source of pleasure and happiness. Liam Neeson performs very well the role of the main character and the movie shows a live and energetic succession of every aspect of his activity in the pursuit of his aim, including aspects and scenes of his own personal and married life. About the end one of his assistants refers to him that he never dealt with the question of love in his works. He gave a prompt and clear reply to this: love cannot be measured and science only deals with measurable objects and actions. But love is not totally absent from this movie. In fact the love that unites the Kinsey spouses is very deep and firm. Even jealousy appears once in the scene where one of his assistants has a fight with another one that was having an affair with the former's wife. This proves that it is not that easy to consider sexual behavior only under its physical aspects and that psychological ones are also to attend. A beautiful movie on a very difficult theme but in which the mastery and skill of Bill Condon brings it to a good end.