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Kinsey
Fox Searchlight Pictures


8.8

based on 40 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 51 votes
Read user comments
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FILM:

BOOKS:

T.C. Boyle: The Inner Circle

MPAA RATING: R for pervasive sexual content, including some graphic images and descriptions

Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, and Oliver Platt

This film turns the microscope on Alfred Kinsey (Neeson) in a portrait of a man driven to uncover the most private secrets of a nation. (Fox Searchlight)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Bill Condon
DIRECTED BY:	Bill Condon
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 17, 2005 Theatrical: November 12, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	118 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

One of the year's most satisfying films.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The strength of Kinsey is finally in the clarity it brings to its title character. It is fascinating to meet a complete original, a person of intelligence and extremes.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Kinsey is patient and educational and never (darn it) rude or shocking.

The New Yorker David Denby

Playful and happy and even naughty. It's partly a scientific brief, partly a song of sex, and it's enormously enjoyable.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The movie's strength lies in its portrayal of a many-sided genius, as manipulative as he was charming and persuasive, monomaniacal to a fault, generous and sweet yet utterly clueless about the emotional havoc he wrought in the name of science.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Intelligently written and directed with a pleasing frankness by Bill Condon and well played by Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and a strong supporting cast, the film skillfully uses the forms of old Hollywood to tell a story that would have given heart failure to Harry Cohn and his fellow tycoons.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Mr. Condon's great achievement is to turn Kinsey's complicated and controversial career into a grand intellectual drama.

Slate David Edelstein

A stupendously moving film. Neeson nails Kinsey's rock-hard decency and fragile ego, and Linney abets him beautifully: There isn't an actress in movies right now who's more simply alive.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Liam Neeson has never had a richer character to play on screen -- including his landmark role in "Schindler's List" -- and has never displayed such formidable energy and virtuosity.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The face-to-face interviews laced throughout the movie are fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny. Ask people to talk dirty and you don't know what they'll say.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Scrappy, funny, hot-to-trot biopic.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

As superbly crafted -- as good -- as this movie is, Condon never really owns up to the cloud of pessimism at its center.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Those who aren't inclined to lambaste will surely have some stimulating conversations after the film is over.

USA Today Mike Clark

Linney is a match for Neeson, and the only thing that might keep Lithgow from getting a supporting-Oscar nomination is the brevity of the part.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

It's as purely entertaining as it is thought-provoking and timely.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

This hip, highly partisan biography of Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey is a surprisingly entertaining movie about the perils of studying sexual behavior in a sexually uptight culture--our own.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie's scientific content is so fascinating that it almost feels like a bonus that Kinsey himself is such an intriguing figure.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Controversy aside, there's no denying that Kinsey was a pivotal figure in 20th-century America, and one whose fascinating story makes for a fascinating film.

Empire Adam Smith

A deftly directed, superbly acted and occasionally witty biopic which is not afraid to engage with the complexities of its central character.

Time Richard Corliss

The movie wants to entertain and educate, not leer, about people flummoxed by participating in a revolution they had meant only to calibrate, and at that it succeeds handsomely.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

If it lacks a certain fuzzy warmth, Kinsey makes up for the shortfall with spirited and (for a commercial movie) amazingly candid vigor. It's an alert, lively movie with a crackling performance by Liam Neeson.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

It is Condon's adroit handling of the subject matter and the caliber of performances within that carry it above the norm.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Lively, sometimes funny and, inevitably, provocative.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is a fine motion picture with a couple of superlative performances. It is arguably the best, most honest bio-pic of the year.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The movie's style is fairly staid, but it's hard to imagine how Neeson could be better, and the subject is handled with taste and tact.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's sober, never flashy or exciting but always engrossing.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

A mature biopic as entertaining as it is timely.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Compared to "Ray," which takes Ray Charles' unique life story and manages to make it feel like a cliche, Kinsey is total sophistication and nuance.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Condon's direction is steady and fearless, Neeson and Linney are individually excellent and together they create an inspiring chemistry for a truly adventurous marriage.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

If only Condon kept up the Q&A format, because when he ditches it the movie turns flat and familiar.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

It's a new Neeson as Dr. Alfred Kinsey, all spiky-haired and harried, and he's enormously appealing in the role.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

For a film about man who spent half his life defying staid convention, Kinsey remains as timid as a choirboy.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Opening too late for the election but still one the year's most politically relevant movies, Condon's earnestly middlebrow biopic is an argument for tolerance and diversity.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Throughout the film a question tugs at the viewer. Kinsey's work was inarguably important, but his life is not especially interesting.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Kinsey is too tasteful by half, and while it may have its gentle charms, it never thrills.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Apart from some unexaggerated notations about American puritanism in the 1940s and '50s, this is more a work of exploration than a thesis, and Condon mainly avoids sensationalism.

TV Guide Ethan Alter

By focusing on one period in his life, this film chronicles the bulk of Kinsey's experiences while barely scratching the surface of his personality.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Condon's tone is gentle and lifeless and at times baffling: The picture is a weird cross between clinical and whimsical.

Washington Post Teresa Wiltz

For all its explosive material, this is a fairly straightforward telling.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The movie dramatizes a social-sexual sea change with an out-of-control blend of cartoon farce and melodrama and clinical, often ludicrous sex scenes.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 51 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Abby L gave it a9:
Very complex and interesting view.

Tony S. gave it a10:
Moving, complex, educational, and fully satisfying. Neeson and Linney head up as good a cast as you can get. Compelling both as a tribute to the modern scientific spirit and as a critique of pre-modern moralistic rigidity.

Frank O. gave it a9:
Better than I expected, like the use of color and blk/white...great sequence learning their interview process...Neeson and Linney were very good. Peter Sarsgaard is underrated actor; plot kept moving, Bill Condon did great job just as he did with Gods and Monsters - another good flick you should see.

Tony gave it a7:
Structurally sound and extremely well acted, Kinsey is a reminder of both how things change and how they remain essentially the same.

v dawg gave it a9:
Convincing indeed.

Mathew gave it a9:
A wonderful nuanced biopic of an important, colorful, and controversial figure in mid-century America (what a naive time that was!). Neeson, Linney and the supporting cast are superb. As with most biopics, small scenes are often meant to cover substantial territory. For the most part this film succeeds better than most in highlighting many facets of a long event-filled life. It's only failing might be that it seriously underplays the significantly less than scientific nature of some of the 'sex research' his institute team undertakes and the tendency to overstate the exceptions to the 'norm'. The thornier question that this film fails to pursue, really is not about how sexually unaware America was fifty/sixty years ago, but how one man's unique perspective and eccentricities can shape supposedly 'objective' research–the hand of the scientist literally leaving its mark upon the subject observed. This movie chooses to shy from this isuue and instead favor the heroic nature of what Kinsey achieved, adding illumination where lights were always kept dim, and perhaps this is as it should be.

J. Ryan G. gave it a7:
A mostly fine film, it fails only near the end, when it has become too full of information and the audience has become aware that it should be taking notes. If it needed more of anything, it would be John Lithgow's heartbreaking performance.

Kinsey Fox Searchlight Pictures

Kinsey
Fox Searchlight Pictures