"Come on, it's not all bad. At least we're both getting more sex than we did in Love Actually."

Science gets sexy in Kinsey, a biopic about the pioneering sex researcher who dared to ask questions – lots and lots of questions – about what America was doing behind closed doors.

Liam Neeson plays Alfred Kinsey, who had already made a career out of a comprehensive study of gall wasps – and what a movie that would have made, huh? – before he started the work that would shock the nation and make him a household name. After a painfully awkward and awkwardly painful wedding night, Kinsey decides he needs to learn a little something about sex, eventually becoming a resource for naïve, young married couples at Indiana University where he teaches. Once he realizes just how many naïve, young married couples are out there, Kinsey starts teaching a standing room only course in “marriage.” From there, his biologist’s inclination toward specimen collection leads him to develop a comprehensive questionnaire about people’s lives and sexual habits and use it to gather data from an astonishing number and variety of individuals.

Along the way he explores issues of sexuality in his own life and among his staff, and becomes both hero and pariah when his findings explode into the public consciousness.

Writer/director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) cleverly frames the movie with scenes of Kinsey answering his own questionnaire. As he responds to questions posed by his clean-cut young researchers, flashbacks explore his strict upbringing at the hands of his overbearing father and his courtship and marriage to Clara McMillen, an independent-minded fellow scientist, shrewdly and sensitively played by Laura Linney.

Trust me, that crowd's not there to hear about the gall wasp.

Condon’s movie is sympathetic and much funnier than I’d expected, but doesn’t shy away from showing Kinsey’s prickly, socially-inept side or from pointing out that his focus on data all but ignores the emotional and psychological aspects of sexual behavior. Kinsey’s single-mindedness has consequences, both personal and professional. His work jeopardizes his relationship with his grown son and his own sexual experimentation understandably shakes things up in his marriage. There’s also a scene with a pedophile who is as obsessive about cataloging his own sexual experiences as Kinsey is about everyone else’s. Does this make them kindred spirits, as the man believes? Kinsey doesn’t think so (neither do I for that matter) but Condon stops short of answering the question for us.

Neeson’s performance is truly brilliant. Kinsey isn’t always likeable, but he is always understandable, whether he’s abrasively pressuring a potential funding source or realizing that even his bullying father might have reasons for behaving as he does. If both he and Linney don’t get Oscar nominations out of this, then I give up on those stupid awards. I also really liked John Lithgow as Kinsey Sr.; Oliver Platt as the university president who supports Kinsey’s work when it would have been so much easier not to; and especially Peter Sarsgaard’s frank, simple portrayal of  Kinsey’s favorite research assistant.

Kinsey isn’t a perfect movie. It left me with more unanswered questions than I would have liked; for example, did he ever resolve his relationship with his son? But overall it’s a fascinating and humanistic portrayal of a man who, quite honestly, I’d never given much thought to before. There’s no denying that Kinsey’s work has had a tremendous influence on American society. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee an interesting movie, but in this case and in Condon’s hands that's what we got.

Gorilla Pants rating: 3.5 out of 4 bananas