Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

Bob and Carol Sanders return to Los Angeles from a group therapy retreat with a new outlook on honesty and sexual freedom, and they begin sharing that outlook with their closest friends, Ted and Alice Henderson. The four are a matched pair of comfortable California couples, but the Sanders' enthusiasm for openness unsettles the more conventional Hendersons even as it stirs curiosity. The film follows what happens when private desires are brought into the open among friends.

Paul Mazursky directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Larry Tucker, who produced; it was Mazursky's first film as director. Natalie Wood and Robert Culp play Carol and Bob, with Dyan Cannon and Elliott Gould as Alice and Ted. The credited cast runs to 62 names. Shot for about two million dollars, it returned roughly thirty million worldwide.

On IMDb the film holds 6.7 out of 10 from around 8,100 votes, and on TMDB 6.3 out of 10 from 116 votes. A critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 62 reviews places critical regard higher than the audience scores. Released in September 1969, the comedy drama arrived as the first entry in Mazursky's directing career, which later included An Unmarried Woman, Moscow on the Hudson and Down and Out in Beverly Hills.