****Excellent***Good**Fair*Poor : <i> Recent releases, reviewed by Times critics.</i> : Movies : ** “Can’t Buy Me Love.” <i> Touchstone. $89.95. 1987. PG-13.</i>

Another gimmick movie--excuse us, “high concept”--in which a high school nerd pays a gorgeous cheerleader to date him for a month, later discovering that coolness and the in-crowd are no bed of roses. This feeble script doesn’t really deserve the sometimes charming performances of its young leads, Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Peterson, or Steve Rash’s sometimes lively direction. The moral--you can’t buy popularity--is something the movie makers should take to heart themselves.