Claudio Carvalho
The comedy "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" is the type of movie that aged badly. The story of free love, freedom, true feelings and other values from the late 60´s and 70´s is absolutely dated in 2018. The cast is top-notch and the mignon Natalie Wood has a shining performance with witty dialogs. Quincy Jones´ music score is also magnificent. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Bob, Carol, Ted e Alice" ("Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice")
Steve Pulaski
Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a devilishly funny but wickedly thoughtful and contemplative film that shows a time period in America when what happened in the bedroom between a man and a woman didn't stay in the bedroom between a man and a woman. The newer generation taught us to be more open and thoughtful with our sexual desires, expressing them freely, and not restricting them as if sex was an unnatural thing. Connecting this to film, as I so often do, just look at how Americans have quietly been told to fear sex. A violent wartime epic can still achieve a PG-13 rating, while a three second shot of a vagina will stamp you film with the "kiss of death" NC-17 rating. How have our private parts been so private we've resorted to embracing the unnatural and the cruel and fearing the natural and the serene? Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was made in 1969, right on the teetering edge of the hippie movement and during the "free love" movement, where marriage was seen as a restraint on ones well-being and pocketbook and the state had no business in dealing with it. The film, judging by its premise, deals with the concept of swinging or "wife-swapping," when it in turn, deals with the ethics and moral values that get in the way of doing such acts. We explore the lives of two couples, ostensibly similar on the surface, but royally different when examined. The couples are Bob and Carol Sanders (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood), a trendier, more liberal couple, while Ted and Alice Henderson (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) are your more straight-shooting, square couple, highly indicative of the parents of sexually promiscuous teens in the 1960's and 1970's trying to understand their teenage sons and daughters.Bob and Carol spend a weekend at a couples retreat, one of those camps that allows for emotional honesty between married people to flow and allow for deeper feelings and emotions to penetrate one another. Because of the impact this has had on them, Bob reveals to Carol that while working on a film set he slept with another woman in an act he called "purely physical" and not emotional. Carol accepts this about as well as a wife could, believing Bob, admiring his honesty, and carrying on her own way, even casually revealing it to their best friends Ted and Alice, who are appalled at the thought. Alice finds herself especially sick with the idea that Bob could do such a thing and then reveal it to Carol who isn't the least bit upset with him. Damn western hippies, I tell you.This prompts Ted and Alice to have a lengthy nighttime conversation about the affair, the impact it could have on their friends in the long term, and if they themselves are sexually promiscuous at all. This is one of the many great talks in the film, focusing sharply on human emotion and feelings, two things often traded in American cinema for punchlines and vulgarity. In this conversation, Mazursky leaves the camera turned on the couple for a long period of time, listening to the conversation, hearing what both has to say, and leaving us with a lot to contemplate by the end of talk, whether we're single or married.These kinds of dialogs that go on for a while and leave the view in a self-contemplative state are fiercely common in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, including the nudging idea of "is it possible for a couple to be married for a lifetime and not have sexual feelings for another women, be them expressed or regressed?" Throughout his career, Mazursky has been interested in character, marriages, the arguments and debates that a husband and wife have, but most importantly, relationships. When I say "relationships," I don't mean those confined to a marital or dating relationship but various relationships people can find themselves in.The actors here couldn't have been more perfect for their roles. We have the unbelievably gorgeous and beautifully mannered Natalie Wood in a role that requires impeccable conviction and plausibility, given the tender nature, Robert Culp in an equally uncomfortable but rewarding role, with Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon assuming the role of the uppity parents trying to comprehend this "sexual openness" these couples speak of. All of these actors, equipped with Mazursky's and co-writer Larry Tucker's biting dialog, help illustrate the generation gap where sex is a revered act that should be kept on the down-low or sex is an act embraced and discussed.With Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Mazursky and Tucker ask the biggest questions I've seen them ask yet. Is free love something to embrace or condemn? Is swinging, wife-swapping, or an orgy lethal to a marriage and its long-term prosperity in health? Is it healthy in itself to casually dismiss an affair or harp on it and risk losing the one you love? To show that these questions are still very much alive and the idea of sexual openness is still one discussed today, the modern-day film equivalent to Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies, a film that clearly is influenced by Mazursky's film right down to its poster. Both films explore the aforementioned ideas, only one takes a much younger cast and puts them to use while the other takes couples grappling with an older age and simply trying to fit in. Both films are two of my favorite romantic comedies to boot, as well.
Brian T. Whitlock (GOWBTW)
The 60's, a decade of rebellion and expressionism can happen. With this movie, you got a great cast of stars to make this movie worthwhile. Robert Culp and Natalie Wood play Bob and Carol Sanders. An Los Angeles couple who just returned from a retreat to express "free love" to one another. Their friends Ted and Alice Anderson (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) are the exact opposites of Bob and Carol. So what do they do? They head out to "Sin City", Las Vegas, Nevada. What is it? Not to gamble, but to have an orgy. Are they going to be content with that? It is to say. No one one was truly faithful with each other. Especially Bob and Carol. Even Ted was a very naughty man as well. So everyone gets one big room, get undressed and all four of them are in one big bed. Kissing each other: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. Hence the title. Of course, Bob did kiss Alice and Ted kiss Carol. After that night, it was very bewildering for all four of them. Back in the 60's, I thought only the hippies practice free love, who would ever know. Great movie, great plot, great cast. It's a gem one will never forget.5 stars!
CanyonLove
***SPOILER*** Today, talk of performance-related erectile dysfunction is on every woman's lips, if you'll pardon the expression. Group or open sexuality, for the uninitiated straight first-time "vanilla" male, particularly in the same room/bed with another male, can be a very stressful situation.Simply put: Despite the appeal and willingness of Carol & Alice, neither Bob or Ted, in their situational anxiety, were able to "get it up". Watch carefully and you'll see the disappointment on the faces of the women.As the former public relations director and spokesman for the 1970s Sandstone Retreat (imdb: "Sandstone") I often compared the psychological benefits of well-introduced group sex with the well-guided initial psychedelic experience. Both experiences often result in highly euphoric, life changing, long lasting insight.Finally, B&C&T&A, despite the wardrobe, is by no means a quaint relic of the swinging 60s/70s. Real life realizations of their entirely rational human impulses occur every day and night in every large city and small town around the world.The Sexual Revolution, and the realities of polyamory, polyfidelity, the swinging lifestyle and safer sex practices remain alive and well in God-fearing America in the 21st Century.
