Carnal Knowledge

As a slice of familiar Feiffer cynicism, tracing the arid sex life of two contrasting males from eager college days to drained middle age, this was never quite the major assault on sexism and male chauvinism it set itself up to be. For one thing, Nichols directs with his usual mixture of theatricality and artiness, so that parts (the fumbling triangular courtship at the beginning; the incandescent vulnerability of Ann-Margret; the bleak squalor of Nicholson's slide-show lecture on his conquests) are much better than the whole. For another, Feiffer's arrows, despite some neatly barbed dialogue, mostly seem to fall short of the target.