Kinsey

The Muse and I caught the last 3/4 of Kinsey the other night. The Muse had a very difficult weekend healthwise and this movie came on when she was starting to feel a little better and we both had wanted to see it and it was on, so what the hell?

It was a pretty good movie, nothing earthshaking. It was a pretty standard biography, although about a pretty interesting guy. What stuck out to me was the acting. Most prominently, it was the first thing that I have seen that indicated to me that Liam Neeson actually is a pretty decent actor. In everything I had seen him in previously, he played pretty much the same guy. A big, manly guy who also was pretty sensitive. Husbands and Wives. Phantom Menace (man, it hurts just to acknowledge that movie's existence -- damn you, George Lucas, making bad Star Wars prequels). Even Schindler's List. More or less the same kind of guy.

But Kinsey was different. He was playing this rather odd, very driven guy who decided that his life's mission was to find out as much about people's sex lives and get the information out there so that people would understand things better. He experimented with various alternatives himself, to see what they were like. He was willing to let his wife sleep with his assistant (with whom he had slept too) to promote his studies. He calmly conducted an interview with a guy who basically was a serial child molester. It was very interesting to see him playing this part, which he did well.

With one pretty glaring exception (more on that later), the acting was very, very good. Laura Linney was, as always, very good as Kinsey's wife, sort of this respectable Midwestern faculty wife who happened to participate actively in some of Kinsey's efforts. Peter Saarsgard also was, as always, very good. He has this very interesting technique where he speaks very quietly, but intensely, and pulls you in to pay close attention to what he is saying. He also has this way of saying kind of shocking things very blandly and calmly, like when he tells Dr. Kinsey that he would like to stop sleeping with Dr. Kinsey and start sleeping with Mrs. Kinsey. Basically, he presents himself in the way that is the opposite of what you would expect in the situation, which makes you pay closer attention. It's sort of like Al Pacino in the first two Godfather movies, I guess, which is saying something.

Now for the exception. I was merrily watching Kinsey when The Muse pointed out, "Hey, honey, it's your favorite actor." To which I thoughtfully replied, "What?" "It's Chris O'Donnell," she said. And, sure enough, it was Chris O'Donnell. Here is someone whose fame and fortune I will never understand. He's basically a bland, blond American lookin' guy who can't act his way out of a paper bag, yet probably has several million dollars in his bank account due to his participation in classics like Scent of a Woman, Batman & Robin and The Bachelor. Now, the several million dollars part I can take. Lots of people who don't deserve to be rich are (Paris Hilton, Nikki Hilton, etc.). What galls me specifically about Chris O'Donnell is that he gets to play in the AT&T Crosby pro-am at Pebble Beach because of his lousy movie career.

So enough about how Chris O'Donnell galls me. Let's move on to how bad he was in Kinsey. He basically was the opposite of Peter Saarsgard. Where you expect O'Donnell to be loud and mad, he's loud and mad. Where he and Neeson are interviewing the serial child molester, O'Donnell's character gets sick of it. O'Donnell shouts, "Screw this, I'll see you in the bar" and stomps out. Nice. What a brilliant choice of acting technique. Then he gets all twinkly at some point about his girlfriend. God, give me a break.

What was fascinating was to see Saarsgard and O'Donnell in the same movie. Saarsgard bascially can act circles around O'Donnell, largely because Saarsgard doesn't go for the obvious cut at things. I don't think that it's much of a stretch to say that Saarsgard will still be getting good parts when O'Donnell is starring in a reality show with one of the Olsen twins.