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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Amusing and Intriguing, April 7, 2003
Certainly a movie that has publicized the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies. Very interesting how Bob and Carol's carefree attitude about sex eventually loosens up Ted and Alice's more conservative ways. Its interesting how Bob and Carol test their relationship with their affairs. Amusing how Carol is quicker to be more accepting of their individual affairs than Bob. Ted and Alice at first are appalled by each of their infidelities. However when they hear the reasons behind their actions, they lighten up their approaches. Bob and Carol truly love each other where their affairs are merely for recreational purposes. Those who are intrigued by psychology or the free love generation of the late sixties will be specially interested in this video.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Elephant Talk?, August 13, 2006
This review is from: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (DVD)
In my consumer guide mode, I should first mention one very simple way to tell whether you might like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice--do you like films that are almost all dialogue? If not, you should stay away from this one, because that's 90 percent of it. It's very poignant and often clever dialogue, but dialogue nonetheless.
A dialogue-laden film can't succeed without grand performances, and we get just that from the four principal actors. I was especially impressed with Elliott Gould, partially because I haven't always liked him in other films.
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice deals with normal, middle class couples in the late 1960s who are trying to deal with and adapt to cultural spillover from the then-popular hippie movement. Bob (Robert Culp) is a filmmaker who wants to do a documentary on something of a "personal exploration retreat". While initially checking the retreat out, he and wife Carol (Natalie Wood) completely forget about the film and become wrapped up in the personal exploration taking place. When they get back home, they introduce their new approach to life and interpersonal communications to best friends Ted (Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon), who think that Bob and Carol have gone a bit looney. They really think that when later Carol suddenly announces that Bob had a brief affair with another woman and they're both happy with it. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice then becomes primarily an exploration of how average middle class folks deal with attempts to incorporate hippie sexual liberation beliefs into their lives.
It's a great idea, handled with aplomb by writer-director Paul Mazursky and co-writer Larry Tucker. Interestingly, Mazursky revisited the same basic ideas in Scenes from a Mall (1991), which enabled him to show how much popular cultural attitudes had changed between the late 1960s and the early 1990s. Here, the cultural clash between hippies and the middle class allows him to adeptly explore a number of themes, ranging from hippie ideals as a trend to be followed rather than ideals that are believed in for their own sake, to the psychological conflicts of intrinsic desires either against other intrinsic desires or against cultural conditioning and expectations. Mazursky employs an artful restraint so that these themes are only implicit, but they're definitely present.
The ending of the film is highly unusual but effective, although especially for me--as someone who champions extremely liberal sexuality and thinks monogamy isn't really a great idea--there was a contradictory one-two punch of being disheartening, then shortly after uplifting. The effect of the final scene was a bit enigmatically ambiguous. But I don't think that's a bad thing at all.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not just a camp send-up!!!!!!, October 19, 1999
By A Customer
I see I'm going to have to stand up for this film! This is an
incredibly insightful look at the sexual revolution, filmed even as
the changes happening in our society were still developing!!! Two
couples struggle with the concept of fulfillment. Treating their each
and every desire for temporal pleasure as an entitlement, they come
face to face with their personal limits, and the dehumanizing aspects
of hedonism. The end is more evocotive then Leonard Maltin ... would
have you believe. All of them have woken up (in the evening) to
their collective morning after. They are in the elevator coming down
from their "trip." They are shellshocked. The music
swells..."what the world needs now is love sweet
love." Love. The part of the equation they had forgotten to
account for. They exit the elevator and walk out into the Vegas
night. Peoplo from all over the world have come to the same place,
are struggling with the same issues, trying to find someway of making
contact with each other. Maybe I'm just an old hippie. Maybe it is
pretentious. I also know it is the film truest to that time and what
happened to that generation.
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