BEFORE: Moving from adultery to sex research (which, I'm betting involves some adultery...) as Liam Neeson Week rolls on - and Birthday SHOUT-out #44 to Mr. Neeson tonight, and Laura Linney carries over from "The Other Man" as an added bonus.
THE PLOT: A look at the life of Alfred Kinsey (Neeson), a pioneer in the area of human sexuality research.
AFTER: Yes, there was a time not so long ago, where people had sex but didn't talk about it so much. Before sex (and talking about sex) dominated the airwaves and the interwebs, when pornography came in paper form (and on stone tablets before that, presumably) and people worshipped trees and rode around on dinosaurs.
First off, congratulations to whoever cast the 19-year old Kinsey - he looks just like a young Neeson! But then, I guess that's what good casting agents (and hair/makeup stylists) do. The actor is Benjamin Walker (last seen in "Flags of Our Fathers").
Kinsey apparently came into his studies on human sexuality after years of research on insects, and after his honeymoon proved that there was a lot he didn't know about sex. Turns out he wasn't alone, and many of his students demonstrated gaps in their sexual knowledge. This was at a time (early 1920's) when myths about sex and venereal diseases were as common as facts, and people wondered if their sex acts made them "normal". Short answer - no, you're a freak, but fortunately so is everyone else...
SO he set out to chart sexual histories, starting with the student body and then expanding, and expanding. Once he was properly motivated, he began working long and hard, and as the scope of the project kept increasing, he found over time that even though the work was somewhat repetitive, more speed was required to reach a proper conclusion, and the task became more and more urgent, until finally a quick release of his findings exploded into the American consciousness. (OK, I couldn't resist, I'll stop that now...)
All kidding aside, he thrust himself (sorry) into his research - quite literally. If he wanted to know about homosexuality, let's just say he got some hands-on experience. Isn't there some scientific rule about not being one of your own test subjects? Shouldn't he have tried to abstain from um, field research in the interests of remaining impartial? And by studying everyone else's "deviancies", didn't he himself become "deviant" himself? Or at least the ultimate voyeur?
To be fair, in researching what people did sexually (as opposed to what they claimed to do) he did attempt to separate the sexual acts from any moral judgments - which led to some rather unusual opinions about sex offenders. No doubt his work revealed a lot and pushed many boundaries, and of course got people talking - but by studying sex pragmatically, it seems like he also took some of the fun out of it. After all, if it isn't immoral, isn't it less fun?
Also starring Chris O'Donnell (last seen in "Scent of a Woman"), Timothy Hutton (last seen in "Secret Window"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "Dead Man Walking"), John Lithgow (last seen in "Terms of Endearment"), Oliver Platt (last seen in "A Time To Kill"), Tim Curry (last seen in "It"), and Dylan Baker (last seen in "The Last of the Mohicans"), with cameos from William Sadler (last seen in "August Rush"), Julianne Nicholson (last seen in "Snatch"), Veronica Cartwright (last seen in "The Witches of Eastwick"), John Krasinski (last seen in "Away We Go") and Lynn Redgrave.
RATING: 5 out of 10 foundation grants
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