Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Drawing many rave reviews and even Academy Award nods, this remains one of my personal choices for a truly horrible film. I have tried over and over to watch this thing, telling myself to turn more positive and all that stuff. It doesn't work. Usually the sheer whiny and lifeless dialog alone makes me stop the video tape long before I have seen more than a third of the scenes. Seen by many as a great 60's portrayal, it lacks even the excitement of that era. The thought of having an affair, sexual or otherwise, with any of these morbid and depressing characters is totally out of the question for me.

Inveterate hippies who still smoke a joint a day will continue to find this movie a joy, even when their days of prostate problems and wrinkles have arrived. As Ancient Greece was important to the eventual development of drama, this movie is important to the eventual development of the X rated disasters currently in production.

I found this film at a video store and immediately rented it out of curiosity. It stars Robert Culp, Natalie Wood, Elliot Gould, and Dyan Cannon as the namesakes respectively. I remember when I was a kid this film came out in 1969 so I really did not know anything about it other than it was supposed to be some kind of "sex comedy".

Well being an adult now and renting it, I found that it basically deals with 2 married couples, the ages of which suggest upper 30's to me. They decide to experimentally partake of the late 60's climate of free love, drugs, etc. I think that is where the film is supposed to derive its humor from.

Instead, the film plays like prolonged unfunny sketches on "Saturday Night Live" which they save for the end of the broadcast. However, I was compelled to keep watching the film to see what would be the result of their "experiment" The film did have some funny moments such as Elliot Gould fantasizing about a marital affair and Dyan Cannon at the shrink.

I give the film credit since I could not figure out what the ending would be like and was somewhat surprised by it when it happened. There is a second part of the ending right before the credits roll which still has me confused though. Overall, an OK film in my opinion.

Side Note: Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon look pretty hot in this movie so if your a male like myself and always found these woman attractive, its a must rental !

Any film made during the "Swinging Sixties" is almost sure to look silly to us today - a plethora of "groovy man"s as well as doped-up pontifications about "letting it all hang out" and becoming one of the "beautiful people", all served up with garish camera tricks and gaudy production design. You know, "Austin Powers" but without the wink-wink knowingness.

(NOTE: To see how a so-called "classic" can be killed by the passage of time - and the absence of pharmaceuticals in one's system - check out "Easy Rider". That is, if you can stand it.)

On the surface, "B&C&T&A" seems to be in line with such films: it is, after all, how a quartet of middle class "squares" become indoctrinated into the hippie values of free love and "doing your own thing." However, the film uses that set-up as a means to deflate - gently and good naturedly - those very values. For, as the group becomes more uninhibited and "with it," the more goofy and ridiculous they all seem. This is particularly true of Robert Culp and Natalie Wood (Bob and Carol), as they take on the hippie philosophy full-bore and unquestionably. Casting here is impeccable: seeing the square-jawed, All-American looking Culp (then the epitome of middle-brow, as star of "I Spy") utter lines straight out of the Dennis Hopper - Peter Fonda playbook is just unutterably funny; he's got the words all right, but the music is woefully wrong. Same thing with Natalie Wood; can there be anyone more whitebread than her? The more she attempts to be "groovy" the more perfectly square she seems, particularly as Carol appears to just be parroting everything her husband says and does in adopting this new lifestyle. Quite the opposite of "liberation", wouldn't you say?

Perhaps funnier, though, are Elliot Gould and Dyan Cannon as Ted and Alice, since they get to register all the (comic) shock and horror of their friends' complete abandonment of rationality. And the equally strong undercurrents of jealousy that their friends are getting to enjoy all the freedom and sexual gratification that they themselves, as good well-behaved members of society - are missing out on. Cannon's neurotic sessions with her psychiatrist - where she continually broaches, and then backs off of, what's really troubling her - provide wonderful moments of comic denial and delusion.

What the film ultimately exposes is the moral vacuity of much of the hippie philosophy - that happiness and feeling good about oneself are not all there is to life, and that focusing too narrowly on them leads ultimately to emptiness. It also makes the subtle point, however, that much of what might initially have been good about hippie thought (or at least, the thoughts of those who inspired the hippies in the first place) was oversimplified and thereby corrupted when the middle class tried to incorporate it, seizing only upon those elements of it which seemed "fun" or "a turn-on" to them. Let's face it: how much of the so-called Woodstock Nation really had any deep political or philosophical commitments; most were just middle class kids turned on to the immediate buzz of easy drugs, free sex, and rebellion for its own sake. Likewise, cosmetic changes such as longer hair or listening to rock'n'roll didn't necessarily change the minds or policies of many in the power structure. As John Lennon said in 1971: "The Sixties didn't change anything. The same b***ards are in power now, it's just they've all got long hair."

I don't mean to suggest that the film gets into issues like this directly; it is never less than a pleasant and even sunny comedy. But these issues in a very real way undergird the film and make it ahead of its time. Released in 1969, "Bob, Carol et al. . ." displays a jaundiced attitude about the counterculture - at least, the middle-class *embrace* of the counterculture - that wouldn't come widely into vogue until at least a decade later. Indeed, the film almost seems contemporary in its bemused and dismissive view of Sixties mores. Austin Powers fans would do well to check it out.

B&C&T&A is still entertaining and has a number of funny scenes. Two of my favorites are the opening scene at the Esalen Institute, and Alice's session with her psychiatrist. The cast,particularly Dyan Cannon (Best Supporting Actress- NY Film Critics)and Elliot Gould, is perfect. B&C&T&A really do seem like couples and friends. It's Natalie Wood's best adult film role, and arguably her best film performance:she's never been more natural or at ease in front of the camera. Robert Culp never had a better role or vehicle. The film marked Mazursky's directorial debut, and it's probably his best film. The final scene in front of the Riviera Hotel in Vegas, recalls the "looking" exercise at the Institute, and was influenced by the parade at end of Felini's "81/2". Therefore, I give the film an 81/2 out of 10. Rent(or buy) the DVD and listen to the commentary with Cannon,Culp,Gould and Mazursky. Did you know that Leif Garrett plays Bob and Carol's son, and that Culp's "I Spy" costar, Bill Cosby, appears briefly(don't blink) in a scene at a club? The film has aged better than Midnight Cowboy, Z, Butch Cassidy, Hello Dolly and Anne of the Thousand Days,the films nominated for Best Picture of 1969. B&C&T&A feels more representative of the 60's than The Graduate, and is definitely worth seeing.

I watched this film again having first seen it on late night TV in the mid 1980s when I was twenty. I thought it would be unintentionally funny, expecting it to have dated badly. How wrong I was! This film is an important timepiece, a fascinating insight in to hip west coast middle class life at a time when America was still on top of the world, yet to realize it would all be downhill from there. The film has stood up remarkably well, it's subject matter still poignant. The cultural and social concepts of fidelity are forever shifting, often turning full circle making films like B&C&T&A relevant and thought provoking some forty years after release. The film is beautifully directed by Mazursky, and is arguably the finest work ever done by all four leads in the film. I found it fascinating observing each performance closely – noting how the actors juggled their obvious affection for their character, while at the same time being true to Mazursky's raison d'être – a gentle dig at the new social mores of the wealthy west coast hip set. Delicately picking at the counter-culture as if choosing hors d'oeuvres from a waiter at a cocktail party, Bob and Carol experiment with dope, extra marital sex and new age group therapy. The dialogue sparkles, the actors so in tune with Mazursky's vision they breathe life in to what are essentially caricatures. At times the film is laugh out loud funny, though not unintentionally as I had expected. I was surprised to realize the film was released in 1969, thinking it was more an early 70s creation, so ahead of its' time does it seem even today. It was years before other artists dared tackle the difficult subject of middle class vacuity, and rarely with the eloquence and humour of this film. The film is also sumptuous to look at, Bob and Carol's elegant faux Spanish villa positively luxurious even by today's standards. The scene of the foursome cruising to Las Vegas in Ted's convertible Cadillac is an elegiac vision, a scene of America that no longer exists. A time when wealthy Americans still bought Cadillacs, when Las Vegas was seen as a place of glamor and fun and despite the social unrest and Vietnam, America was still big, brash and confident. The greatest civilization in the history of the world, all there to see as the white ragtop barrels down the highway, the foursome laughing and in high spirits – a scene that in some ways summed up the theme of the movie. With so much at their fingertips, the luckiest people to have ever lived, but they don't know what to do with the privilege. They are lost, their search for sexual and emotional fulfillment nothing more than a desperate search for meaning, a sad attempt to fill a nagging void. In the mid 1980s, former Eagle front man Don Henley had his last big hit with 'The Boys Of Summer', in which he sings of his dismay at seeing a new Cadillac pass him on the LA freeway, a Dead-head sticker on the bumper. The former hippies, the baby boomers, had sold out. Mazursky was telling us the same thing fifteen years earlier. Perhaps Pete Townsend of the Who summed it up best in his anthemic Won't Get Fooled Again – 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss' A highly thought-provoking experience seeing this film again, and for those interested in culture, counter or otherwise – this is a must.