Product Description

A California couple in the late sixties decide to test the strength of their marital trust and honesty by experimenting with mutually tolerated affairs, much to the amusement of their friends.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 4-APR-2006
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31326 in DVD
• Brand: WOOD,NATALIE
• Released on: 2004-11-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Japanese
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
While its particulars remain rooted in the sexual revolution of the late 1960s, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is remarkably timeless as a classic comedy of manners. Making an impressive, high-profile directorial debut after success as a screenwriter, Paul Mazursky took the pulse of California society better than anyone, especially with this well-cast, sharply observant comedy that begins when sophisticated couple Bob and Carol (Robert Culp, Natalie Wood) attend a weekend retreat that opens their eyes to the possibilities of open marriage and mutual acceptance of extramarital affairs. When they reveal their newfound liberties to straightlaced couple Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould, Dyan Cannon), the subtle, behavioral richness of the largely improvisational screenplay (by Mazursky and Larry Tucker) rises to the surface, conveyed through the kind of natural rhythms and pauses that were dramatically in vogue in the fast-changing Hollywood of 1969. The film hasn't lost any of its punch, perhaps because American sexual politics have returned to the conservatism that existed before Bob and Carol emerged as the signature comedy of the swinging sixties. The absence of the late Natalie Wood is the only drawback to the DVD's excellent commentary, which reunites Mazursky, Culp, Gould, and Cannon in a casual atmosphere of humorous reminiscence. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Elephant Talk?
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.

Amusing and Intriguing
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.

Not just a camp send-up!!!!!!
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.