'THE YOUNG LOVERS'.........ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDA....

The Young Lovers (1964)     Nothing generates more unintentional laughs than Old School Hollywood's attempts to examine youth culture.......especially college students.

            This modest little MGM college life romantic drama stands a farther distance away from reality than the studio's "Forbidden Planet" stood from planet Earth........

             But there's some fun to be had watching this bizarre try at capturing young adult angst on the campus........back in the days when college offered guys a temporary refuge from the Draft and abortions were secretive, expensive and illegal.....

             Those two government-imposed imperatives fuel the drama here, primarily a bumpy romance between a self-absorbed rebellious art student (Peter Fonda) and the shy, reserved co-ed he falls for (Sharon Hugueny).

             You know Fonda's a rebel from the little motorbike he uses to zoom around in. But you also know he's lovable from his inability to stop the bike without slamming into something. You heard us right......he's more like Queasy Rider.

             Hugueny, a modestly talented refugee from the Warner Brothers starlet factory, plays a quiet, grounded education major who's gradually charmed by Fonda's strenuous meet-cute efforts.
 
              Hmmm......did we say quiet? Grounded?  All Fonda has to do is throw a tango LP on the record player and Hugueny goes into a choreographed pseudo-sexual frenzy, releasing her inner  dancing Ann-Margaret. It looks as crazy as it sounds, like a deleted scene from the script of "Where The Boys Are"....... and it's the first indication that the tone-deaf script will force the actors to jump in and out of character at a moment's notice....

             And the very young Fonda and Hugueny have little or no acting skills to make these cardboard cutout kids even remotely believable as flesh and blood humans. In scene after scene, the camera lingers on close-ups of their handome/pretty faces as they paste on whatever emotion the clunky dialogue demands of them.  (.....as if the directer called out various emotions to them using hand signals....)

            Before the two leads can make you slip into slumber, the movie's rescued by two miscast but more than welcome actors playing the other, more lively romantic couple......the too-old-for-college Nick Adams as a footloose slacker one short step ahead of the Draft and the too-young Deborah Walley as his cute, but conservatively exasperated girlfriend.  Who the hell knows how these two stumbled into this movie, but they perk things up a little....their main function, we think.

            Naturally, Fonda and Hugueny pay for their random, unprotected sex with a pregnancy......(this leads to a vivid 1960's time capsule moment, with Hugueny thoroughly scolded by a grandfatherly doctor she hopes will hook her up with a backroom abortion)

            The wild college party is a hoot, too.......(even if the poor shmuck who suggests a hootenanny is told to get lost). Lots of balloons. (We've been to our share of out-of-control college parties and we don't remember a single balloon.......but then none of our bashes followed an MGM script.)

             We did admire the vast Southern California campus on view........the only students who attend appear to be the four lead actors and about 20 kids from Fonda's Ancient History class......the rest of the place looks abandoned, with the school's huge outdoor amphitheater used only for Fonda and Hugueny's heart-to-heart meetings.  (What, no Joan Baez concerts?)

             Quite a rarity coming from a major studio in 1964......(around this time, only American International and Roger Corman had figured out the identity of the most active movie-going demographic......the studios were still making movies for 45 year olds)  And Hollywood wouldn't return to making serious college-set movies for another 6 years......when both the country and the campuses were embroiled in turmoil.

              The irony is.....some of those later films weren't any more a realistic depiction of college life than "The Young Lovers".  But just for giving it the ole college try, we'll grade on a curve and send out a transcript with a 2.0 average.....(**)   (We hope that poor 'hootenanny' guy at the party at least got a part in MGM's "Hootenanny Hoot" the year before.....)