Radio Christmas

Great movie, glad to see that there were nontypical characters.

Most of the Hallmark movies & characters are so superficial and pretentious, they aren't appealing! Loved the the lead characters in Radio Christmas! The male lead & his daughter were particularly lovable. Nice to see roles that seemed believable. That Outdoor hockey game in Winnipeg sure would be cold, though! Let's see more of these actors, with the same writers. Almost forgot to say how nice it was to see Tim Reid on TV again! Good Christmas movie.

Yes, the story of Bethlehem PA is not accurate. So you dis the whole movie? Perhaps it would be worthwhile to look at some things about the movie beyond that one glaring problem. (BTW - I have done the same thing at least partially and I apologize for it. I usually try to avoid it but if I do have a problem getting past one sticking point, I still try to bring out other things positive and negative in any review I write.)

The story should have been Bethlehem, Iowa, or Utah, or anywhere we can file away as made up. If you do that, this is a unique story. The radio/podcast angle is nice. It does lead to the common reporter-investigates-a-secret trope, but even that is not as worn out as some themes. I knew almost immediately who was the Secret Santa, but the whole audience learns that fairly early in the movie. As soon as Kara said she'd keep the secret, it was a pretty certain guess that somehow she would fail.

For me these movies are about relationships and I really enjoyed the relationships between Keshia Knight Pulliam's Kara, Michael Xavier's Scott, and Nakai Takawira's Andie. I loved that Andie is a hockey player, but that's minor compared to how warm that three-way relationship became.

This is a Lifetime movie, but as many of them do, it has what we tend to call a Hallmark ending. To do that, they used some unexpected things and some predictable ones.

As someone who's lived near Bethlehem their entire life, the info on the city is wrong, they don't use the actually town itself (which is gorgeous) and that's just disappointing. The movie itself was cute, I just wish they would have done the ACTUAL city of Bethlehem justice.

To those complaining about the movie not being true to the movie location...this is ridiculous. Almost all Hallmark and Lifetime movies are filmed in Canada and the movie location is usually Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago or locales in Vermont. It is cheaper to film and produce made-for-tv movies in Canada. They have a studio, homes and towns they use year round to make almost all of their movies. Otherwise they would have 3 or 4 Christmas movies per year rather than the 20 plus they make. It costs millions to block off streets and shoot movies in the cities they say the location really is. Many of these movies are based on books, short stories or novellas and they try to stay within the geographic location of the original story. Some use fictitious towns. Very few movies...including million dollar blockbusters...are filmed in the location that is represented in the movie. It wouldn't be financially feasible to film a made-for-tv movie in a city of 75,000.