Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This covers a time period from the 1940s to the 1960s in the lives of two friends, Johnathon (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel). The main focus is on the women in their lives, but it is interesting to note that it is the friendship between the two men that survives some double-dealing by Johnathon (does anybody play the cad better than Nicholson?) and unstable relationships with women.When we first meet the two guys they are sharing a dorm room at Amherst. They talk a lot about sex and are just on the cusp of becoming active. Johnathon is on the trail-head to the path toward being a Lothario--he is mainly interested in sexual appearances. A pivotal scene toward the end has Johnathon presenting a slide show of his female conquests. On the other hand Sandy is shy and thinks he wants something deeper. Neither of the guys seems to be able to relate to women as equals but rather only as to how well their women can fulfill preconceived fantasies. When one of Johnathon's girlfriends tries to get serious he panics.On several occasions in the dorm conversations when certain women are mentioned Johnathon comments, "I wouldn't kick her out of bed." I recall that being a common phrase in the era of this movie. Thinking of the implications of that comment is sobering. Most of the time when I heard it I had the thought, "There is no way that you could *get* her into your bed." In judging the movie you have to keep in mind that it mostly takes place before the advent of the birth control pill and at a time when Playboy Magazine was still considered risqué. The music dates the episodes.Interesting to compare this with some contemporary (circa 2010) takes on the subject, maybe best illustrated by the movies of Judd Apatow and Richard Linklater. The modern take seems much lighter and less fraught. Many people see much humor in CN, but I see it playing more as a tragedy, both for the individuals and for the women of the time. It is hard to envision a happy future for either Johnathon or Sandy. They were doomed to be trapped by the dominant moral codes at the time while being destined to deal with more more independent women as time went on. It is a tragedy for the women who had to contend with such men as Johnathon and Sandy, and still do to a great extent.I found the acting to be uniformly good with Ann-Margaret being the standout as one of Johnathon's girlfriends. I was surprised that Garfunkel was credible, providing a good foil to Nicholson's dominating performance.

The sixties were a time when nearly every boundary was tested. In the seventies we began to learn that boundaries don't necessarily restrict freedom but exist to provide elasticity which stretched too thin too fast can break. Carnal Knowledge follows two buddies through their college years and into middle age a period during which the sexual revolution swept many not into a new land of liberation but to a world of sexual dysfunction, misogyny, and oppression. Jack Nicholson is terrific as man who became a callous, self-centered product of the revolution. Art Garfunkel, in a stiff and uninteresting performance, is Nicholson's erudite buddy. Directed by Mike Nichols, the movie lacks the wit of "The Graduate" and Jules Feiffer's script is leaden without a hint of irony that could elevate the film from tolerable to entertaining. Carnal Knowledge is a curio of late sixties/early seventies film-making that captures, depressingly, the underside of the '60s sexual revolution. Perhaps a wittier, lighter touch would have made this a classic.

***SPOILERS*** Were introduced to the movie with the cool and sexy sounds of Glenn Miller's classic "Moonlight Serenade" as we see these two wild crazy and mostly horny collage guys Jonathan & Sandy, Jack Nicholson & Art Garfunkel, talking about sex and how to get it on campus by being both cool and with it with all the co-ed's available there. The very with it and confident Johathan is giving pointers to his friend the introverted and shy Sandy in how to pick up girls with him having his eye glued on pretty Susan,Candy Bergen, who's sitting alone at this very boring get together at the main collage dorm. Sandy who tries to make small talk with Susan is too shy and clumsy to open his mouth so it's Susan who starts up the conversation between the two.Before you know it both Sandy and Susan are going study with Jonathan, who wanted nothing at first to do with Susan, feeling left out in the cold. It's later that the very experienced Jonathan beats Sandy to Susan by deflowering her behind Sandy's back which in fact, in Jonathan's animal like behavior, draws her closer to the far more sensitive and feeling her pain Sandy. The film then goes some ten to 15 years into the future to the 1960's during the free love era where everything goes and it's the free and available bachelor, as well as tax and financial lawyer, Jonathan who's getting all the free love, and in some cases paying for it, with Sandy, My Son the Doctor and Gynecologist, now married to Susan and missing out on all the fun.By now the very sexually active Jonathan has gotten bored of all this sex he's been having and has cut down his yearly affairs, with different women, to about a dozen but is still looking for the women in his life that can keep him young and going strong ,in the sex department, until he's ready for the grave. That woman of his dreams turns out to be the sexy and flaming redhead and model Bobbie, Ann-Margaret, who ends up quitting her very high-paying job on TV commercials and shacks up with Jonathan in his bachelor pad in midtown Manhattan. It' not that long that Jonathan loses interest in Bobbie which turns her into a pill popping zombie sleeping as much as 18 to 20 hours a day and becoming addicted to dangerous and life threatening barbiturates. Sandy who had since broke up with Susan is now married to the bull-dike like Cindy, Cynthia O'Neal, who unlike the very sweet and womanly Susan wears the paths in the family.Things come to a head between Jonathan and Bobbie when after a very violet spat or fight between the two, over making the bed and sweeping out the apartment, that Sandy & Cindy show up to party. Jonathan trying to hid what's been happening between him and Bobbie comes up with this bright idea for him and Sandy to swap wives, a very popular thing among swinging couples back then, so that everyone can loosen up and release their pent up emotions. It's a moment later when a very willing Cindy, in going to bed with him, tells Jonathon that if her wimpy spouse Sandy lays as much as a hand on Bobbie he can forget to go back home that he realizes what a big mistake he made. That mistake was intensified when Sandy instead of having anything to do sexually with Bobbie calls the nearest hospital emergency ward after finding her in bed almost dead from an overdose of sleeping pills!It's now 1970 and both Jonathan and Sandy together with his now live in lover as well as love teacher the 18 year old hippie Jennifer, Carol Kane, are watching a slide show of Jonathan's many sexual conquests which included, and which slide he quickly withdrew, Sandy's first wife Susan. Not at all impressed in what Jonathan has to show them both Sandy and Jennifer leave him alone, the guy gives off such bad vibrations Sandy tells him, to his fantasies of years gone by. ***SPOILERS*** It's the final few minutes of the film that really shook me up in Jonathan having this hooker Louise, Rita Mereno,show up at his pad to pump up his both ego and now almost completely gone sexual drive. With Louise looking, with the camera panning up and down exclusively at her hypnotic like face, like a cobra or black mamba rising from the ground and about to strike Jonathan now all heated up and excited finally seems to have gotten his Mojo back and is ready to jump into action just like back in the good old days. But as we and Jonathan sadly know it's only his imagination not his body that's capable of doing that!

I'm guessing that this was considered a sophisticated and honest look at relationships back in 1971. Today, it comes off as terribly ugly and mean-spirited. Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkle star as two friends, from their college days to adulthood, who basically sit around and talk about women. Or sex, really. The women themselves are little more than the owners and annoying defenders of the vaginas their penises really would like to get to know. Among the women they bother are Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Rita Moreno (whom I don't even remember being in the film, honestly), Cynthia O'Neal and Carol Kane (who isn't allowed even to speak). The film is very dry and clinical, and also very boring. I think Mike Nichols made a far more successful film of the same type with Closer in 2004. There really isn't even a performance worth noting here, except for perhaps Ann-Margret's. She has one killer scene, but has to act it opposite a very hammy and detestable Jack Nicholson.