Pervert as hero.(Now Playing)

If you dare to question the dubious methods and findings of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, you're invariably declared naive and prudish by his defenders. What an irony, then, that you would be hard-pressed to find a more naive picture playing in theaters than Kinsey, a much-praised movie biography that embarrassingly lionizes the man's life and work.

Kinsey, written and directed by Bill Condon and starring Liam Neeson in the title role, makes the same crucial mistake that its hero did in studying the sexual behavior of Americans: Neither the man nor the film give any weight to emotions or morality, preferring instead to see sex as nothing more than a biological function that can be recorded on a chart. Like Kinsey himself, Kinsey pretends that sexuality takes place in a vacuum, free of feelings, moderation, and consequences. Yet anyone who has had a first kiss knows that sex isn't quite so simple.

This emphasis on the science would be fine if both the movie and the man were merely objective reporters. But this film and its subject want to argue. Kinsey's argument was that sexual behavior is far more varied than most Americans believe--and that, consequently, even the most harmful types of such behavior should be tolerated. And Kinsey's argument is that this non-judgmental message led to a healthy burst of freedom across the country, second only to the one that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. (The movie's sense of historical proportion is that out of whack.)

Kinsey may have dealt a welcome blow to repression and misplaced guilt for many Americans, but Condon's movie wants us to believe that the liberality of his research methods came at no personal cost. When his wife, Clara, discovers, for instance, that he has been conducting hands-on experiments in homosexuality with one of his fellow researchers, she is allowed only one scene as the betrayed spouse (and even there she's portrayed as something of a fuddy-duddy). Then the movie goes merrily bouncing on its way, suggesting the couple happily solved the situation by agreeing that Clara should sleep with the other man as well.

Nearly every actor involved in Kinsey is being touted by Hollywood insiders as an Oscar contender, mainly because they so dutifully fulfill ...