This hilariously dark, bitter satire is the union of two creative minds who have always been interested in sexual politics and the serious games men and women play with each other. Director Mike Nichols and writer Jules Feiffer are a perfect match, and in this increasingly angry comedy, they take men and women alike to task for turning love and relationships into a battleground for control, power, and ego-fulfillment. The story follows two friends (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel) over the course of twenty years, as they meet women, lose their virginities, get married, and have flings of varying degrees of seriousness. Throughout it all, both men represent the extremes of Feiffer's scale of masculinity: Nicholson is the arrogant jerk who cares only about sex, while Garfunkel is a more "sensitive" type who looks to women for his own spiritual satisfaction. The two men, very different in many ways, are unified in that they never look to a woman for herself, but for the ways in which she can satisfy their own urges, dreams, and desires. Despite these darker currents, the film is always funny, even if sometimes the sheer awkwardness and reality of the situations makes the laughs catch in one's throat a bit. Nichols also draws out surprisingly deep supporting performances from the women in the film, notably Ann-Margret as a voluptuous sex kitten with her own unfulfilled desires, and Candice Bergen as a pretty, cerebral coed who finds herself, almost against her will, playing the two men off one another. This was a controversial film in its time, even triggering a court case in the US Supreme Court, but today its frank discussion of sexuality and the search for love is not nearly as shocking. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the film's power and emotional depth, its realistic portrayal of damaging relationships and the cultural forces and expectations that drive them.