Don't let the famous poster of this swinging comedy of the late 1960's fool you; This is actually more a study of two marriages, two inseparable couples. This shows how modern morals changed the way people communicated, and how they just interrelate. These couples believe in total honesty, but it takes its toll on the real star of the film, Oscar nominated Dyan Cannon. This starts with the seemingly leading couple of Robert Culp and Natalie Wood heading towards a spa, driving into the beautiful countryside as the "Hallelujah Choir" plays lushly in the background. Wood finally gets to be free and honest and practically has a nervous breakdown over it. Back home, they begin to change their existence based upon their experience, and when motherly Cannon overhears Wood's blase revelation that Culp had an affair, she looses it, pretty much having a nervous breakdown in a very groovy nightclub. The tides turn as the honesty leads them to decide to switch partners, Wood ending up with Cannon's husband (a very droll Elliot Gould) and Culp preparing to make love with his best friend's wife, all in a rather tiny bed.So you can say that this is not as wild as it looks, supposedly happily married couples getting together and seeing if they can be as swinging as the world has been trying to tell them that it's OK to be. But individual morals are stronger than sexual desires, so there's a great lesson for them to learn. Thanks to a witty and smart screenplay, this ends up being surprisingly sweet, and nobody gets to point and laugh.

Paul Mazursky's directorial debut ranks with his best. Though B&C&T&A lacks atmosphere and could use tighter editing, it remains one of the 60s top comedies and one of that decades best films. Far better than the insipid comedies Hollywood churned out with Jack Lemon, Peter Sellars, Tony Curtis and Doris Day. In some respects a period piece, B&C&T&A is still funny and pointed today. The 4 leads are believable as couples and friends and Wood, Cannon, Gould and Culp have rarely been better. Gould and Cannon make their long scenes really work and Cannon is a standout especially in a scene with her analyst. Wood is far more nuanced and relaxed than she was in her previous comedies: Penelope, The Great Race, Sex and the Single Girl. The use of improvisation and long uninterrupted scenes works as well here as in any Cassavettes' film and the final scene is inspired by Fellini.

I finally got around to seeing what has been hailed as a seminal film from the 1960s and had the same reaction to it that I've had to every other Paul Mazursky film I've seen -- the man takes boffo premises and neuters them into vague, soft and unmemorable films. I'm willing to give "Bob & Carol...." etc. the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's too much a product of its time to make much sense to a younger viewer who wasn't around to experience the free love movement first hand. But I simply did not know what I was supposed to take away from this film. Robert Culp and a stunning Natalie Wood play a vapid couple who stay at a free love retreat and then implement what they learned in their own marriage, both having affairs and coming out stronger on the other side of them. Elliot Gould and Dyan Cannon play a more traditional and uptight couple who can't handle their friends' swinging ways. When the four of them decide to have a group orgy, they realize they can't go through with it, and the film's lurch from rom-com parody to serious sentimentality seems to imply that they (and we) have learned something from the experience, though what that something is I'm not sure.The whole movie is glib, presenting its characters as caricatures to be made fun of. I couldn't figure out from one moment to the next if Mazursky was exposing the free love movement as an excuse to be able to sleep with whoever you want free of guilt and avoid the emotional obligations that come with fidelity to a life partner; or whether he was condemning the stodgy attitude about marriage and criticizing the tendency of Americans to treat sex much more seriously than we should. I'm not sure he would know if asked.And as payment for seeing the ravishing Natalie Wood and the not-too-hard-on-the-eyes-herself Dyan Cannon in their underwear, I have to live with the image of Elliot Gould in nothing but a pair of underpants the size of an adult diaper tattooed on my retinas for eternity.Grade: C

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.