Judging from its press release, The Young Lovers is a frank, serious, yet sensitive "film" (not movie) about the moral dilemmas which confront today's college generation. It does its best to avoid some of the customary embarassing cliches. For instance, when the girl lets it be known that she's pregnant, her mother crinkles her sad but wise eyes and says, "You love him very much, don't you?" instead of calling the police. And the abortionist turns out to be a prosperous-looking physician instead of the usual touchless crone with a bent coat-hanger.

In spite of these feeble attempts, The Young Lovers is a real stinker. The director, Samuel Goldwyn Jr. (wonder how he got the job?) has evidently seen Jules and Jim; every time Peter Fonda and Sharon Hugueny melt into each other's arms, the air fills with a familiar kind of harps-and-strings music. It's supposed to convey the impression of joyful undergraduate love, but it only conveys the impression that the scene is taking place in the Waldorf Cafeteria.

Fonda, who portrays a good-looking art student, seems to regret having to trade banalities with Miss Hugueny, whose perpetual adoring grin is so wide it looks as if her tongue is about to out of her head. He is impossibly clean-shaven, and both of them have teeth that glow in the dark.

What really does this film in is its godawful script. At one point, the lovers find themselves in a motel room. An unsavory relationship is being loudly consummated in the neighboring cabin, and Miss Hugueny gets upset. "Aren't you going to get a bottle? Isn't that what they do now?" she screams. "You think I'm a whore!" "You said it, I didn't," Fonda replies stupidly, and gets justifiably slapped. Latter, she asks tentatively, "What if I were pregnant?" and Fonda answers, "Get serious." What sensitivity.

The Young Lovers is almost worth seeing, though, for its drive-in movie episodes. Fonda has been rebuffed after trying to cop a little in the front seat. He stares sullenly at the screen and finally remarks, "What a lousy flick." At the theatre I was at, the audience broke into spontaneous applause.