Between the Lines, and it's pleasant. BtL is one of those ensemble, renegade, rage-against-the-machine flicks that have always been with us, but were completely at home in Post-Watergate Land.

All I remember is that I enjoyed the actors (and if you look at the cast, it's an A-Team of talent),that Lindsey Crouse was really cute, and Jeff Goldblum insults some corporate suit or sell-out or whatever with "You pernicious eel-sh**!"

You can tell that Between the Lines didn't make much of a splash because--not counting mine--when I wrote this review, there were nine others.

I saw the movie, I think, on HBO in something like 1978 or 1979, right about the time FM came out. FM was another ensemble, renegade ratm flick, but with great music, and it was really dumb.

I don't remember Between the Lines being stupid. Unfortunately, I just watched it again on TUBI, and, although the movie isn't dumb, it's bland and predictable, an WKRP in Cinncinati kind of mish-mash of actors who have gotten old and, for the guys, bald.

I looked up Lindsey Crouse, and she has aged well. I think the last time I saw her on anything was Law and Order: SVU back in 2000. Jeff Goldblum looks like Jeff Goldblum, only with a shock of white hair. Steven Elliot did something somewhere that got him "canceled." If I'm wrong, I apologize.

John Heard died. The Venus Flytrap character was Joe Morton, and you'll remember him as the black scientist/voice of reason in Eureka. Michael J. Pollard? Passed away? Bruno Kirby? Don't know. Gwen Welles?

As you can see, Between the Lines was oozing with talent, the sort of movie that puts some oomph in an actor's resume.

I still like the movie. It's on TUBI. TUBI's free. You can afford to blow 100 minutes on a snapshot of what raging against the machine looked like in 1977.

A small independent Boston paper has a staff of young eccentrics, hopeful journalists who want to keep what they do free and away from the corporations who would manipulate everything they print and the type of advertising that the paper utilizes. This has a cast of rising young actors including Jeff Goldblum, John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Bruno Kirby, Jill Eikenberry and veteran actor Michael J Pollard, stealing every moment he's on screen as the newspaper street hawker who can get a laugh just by smirking. When they learn from their somewhat Papa's, nervous boss, that there's a deal going through to sell the paper to one of those big corporations, they are not too happy, and they have to come together to decide how they are going to deal with this horrible bit of news.

An excellent script and direction by Joan Micklin Silver gives us a glimpse into life behind the scenes of these big city Independents, perhaps a type of Journalism long gone that focused on integrity, real freedom of the press and a point of view that covered many different topics and methods. This is certainly quite liberal and its storytelling, and the various characters interact an amusing ways even if they don't always get along or agree. It's interesting that for a film directed by a woman, there seems to only be one female reporter on the staff, with other women working for the paper doing basic office duties. There's a little bit of a romantic issue between two of the staff members, one who's constantly depressed and the girlfriend who has to put up with his mood swings.

Goldblum is the gregarious, ambitious one, and Kirby is an awkward young hopeful whose attempts to be as important as the debtor and members of the paper off and gets him laughed at. But when he gets into trouble while doing the big story, they come to his defense, and when push comes to shove as the big shoe drops on these little sneakers, they decide to deal with it in a way that suits their integrity, not guarantees them a paycheck. There's a hysterical ending that is a genuine belly laugh for how they deal with the big corporation representative, particularly how one of them handles it that leaves the representative silent and the audience applauding.

Based on a very minor perusal of the Wikipedia page, it seems Between the Lines was appreciated in some capacity back in the 1970s because it gave a snapshot of the declining industry of independent/alternative newspapers. Perhaps I would like the movie more if that were what it was actually about. I could have summoned some mild amount of interest in a movie that focused on the corporate takeover of the little guy, and how that was going to potentially affect the authenticity of their reporting. Instead I got a long soap opera about the annoying people that work together at a newspaper. There's little in the film besides boring relationship drama among people with little personality, and then Jeff Goldblum acting as the wacky comic relief (who does nothing that is actually funny.) We don't even get a close look at any of the stories they want to write, we just see some minor work they are putting in between sleeping with their coworkers. Between the Lines bounces around from scene to scene with very little narrative direction, and I found myself completely disinterested. I'm sure someone might like this babbling aimless nonsense, but for me it was terribly dull.