in my consumer guide mode and i should first mention one very simple way to tell whether you might like bob and carol and ted and alice do you like film that be almost all dialogue . if not and you should stay away from this one and because that 90 percent of it . it very poignant and often clever dialogue and but dialogue nonetheless . a dialogue laden film can not succeed without grand performance and and we get just that from the four principal actor . i be especially impressed with elliott gould and partially because i haven not always like him in other film . bob and carol and ted and alice deal with normal and middle class couple in the late 1960s who be try to deal with and adapt to cultural spillover from the then popular hippie movement . bob ( robert culp ) be a filmmaker who want to do a documentary on something of a personal exploration retreat . while initially check the retreat out and he and wife carol ( natalie wood ) completely forget about the film and become wrap up in the personal exploration take place . when they get back home and they introduce their new approach to life and interpersonal communication to best friend ted ( gould ) and alice ( dyan cannon ) and who think that bob and carol have go a bit looney . they really think that when later carol suddenly announce that bob have a brief affair with another woman and theyre both happy with it . bob and carol and ted and alice then become primarily an exploration of how average middle class folk deal with attempt to incorporate hippie sexual liberation belief into their life . it a great idea and handle with aplomb by writer director paul mazursky and co writer larry tucker . interestingly and mazursky revisit the same basic idea in scene from a mall ( 1991 ) and which enable him to show how much popular cultural attitude have change between the late 1960s and the early 1990s . here and the cultural clash between hippy and the middle class allow him to adeptly explore a number of theme and range from hippie ideal a a trend to be follow rather than ideal that be believe in for their own sake and to the psychological conflict of intrinsic desire either against other intrinsic desire or against cultural conditioning and expectation . mazursky employ an artful restraint so that these theme be only implicit and but theyre definitely present . the end of the film be highly unusual but effective and although especially for me a someone who champion extremely liberal sexuality and think monogamy isn not really a great idea there be a contradictory one two punch of be dishearten and then shortly after uplift . the effect of the final scene be a bit enigmatically ambiguous . but i do not think that a bad thing at all .