Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour In The Human Male, the celebrated zoologist with fascinating XXX-tra curricular activities is still seen as a bete-noir by American god-botherers. This excellent biopic from Bill Condon (who, as you may recall, delved into the psyche of director James Whale in Gods And Monsters with similarly successful results) has seen various noted puritans wailing, gnashing and getting their presumably heavily reinforced knickers in a twist. Weirdos.
It’s not as if Kinsey – the man or the movie – is prurient in intent. Starting out as a zoologist and pre-eminent authority in the undoubtedly thrilling field of gall wasp behaviour, Kinsey developed a keen and purely academic interest in sexual activities and proclivities. After collecting vast quantities of data, the good professor produced the very thorough Sexual Behaviour In The Human Male, followed by Sexual Behaviour In The Human Female three years later.
Here, endowed with incredible nobility by Liam Neeson, Kinsey is rightly depicted as a great liberator. “Everybody’s sin is nobody’s sin,” he declares as he kicks against the pricks and his own reactionary upbringing. Not that the chap is a remotely Byronic figure. Perhaps the best thing about Kinsey is Neeson’s utterly square portrayal of the sexologist. In keeping with this paradox, Kinsey adopts a winningly complex tone – both scholarly yet slyly humorous, warm yet cerebral – which will surely seduce even those with absolutely no interest in fucking, if such freaks indeed exist.