Kinsey
August 2005 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Indiana University professor, zoologist and entomologist Alfred Kinsey was best known for his groundbreaking work on human sexuality. Published in 1948 and 1953 respectively, Kinsey's volumes on the sexual habits of men and women shattered long-standing assumptions of what people were doing in their bedrooms and opened society up to a broader notion of human sexuality.

Kinsey, which stars Liam Neeson as the movie's namesake, follows Dr. Kinsey's career and work, showing not only how he developed a meticulous system for gathering very personal information but also the effects of his research on his relationships and staff. Neeson plays Kinsey with an earnestness that reveals a scientist's curiosity and addresses the man underneath. Laura Linney plays Kinsey's wife, and Chris O' Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard and Timothy Hutton his research staff. All turn in fine performances that show them probing their own sexuality, sometimes with each other.

But even with its good performances and provocative subject matter, the movie's handling of Dr. Kinsey's research and personal issues is predictable, especially Kinsey's relationship with his overbearing father, played by John Lithgow. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes the sexual repression of a parent doesn't manifest itself in a child who becomes a sex researcher in order to work out his or her own sexual issues. Kinsey takes many of the easiest roads to resolution instead of presenting its namesake as more of what he was: a talented scientist who was also a very complicated man. A documentary on Kinsey from the PBS series American Experience (***1/2) is also a recent DVD release, and shows that Kinsey's work was more a mental than psychological obsession.

Two DVD versions of Kinsey exist: the movie with sparse extras, and a Special Edition with a second disc of extras. These include a feature that asks cast members about their sexual histories, a collection of outtakes, a tour of the Kinsey Institute's museum, 20 deleted scenes, and an interactive sex questionnaire. In one of the deleted scenes, Chris O'Donnell's character blurts out, "Sex is fun." I would have welcomed such spontaneity in the movie. The transfer has deep colors and a filmlike look, and the sound is tastefully done.

Drama and biography are two very different ways to treat real-life subjects. In the case of Kinsey, its subject's life and work were more complex and less titillating than their depiction, and appropriate for something other than the Hollywoodized treatment they got. Rent the PBS documentary along with the movie and see if you agree.

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