Miracle In Bethlehem PA | 2023 Christmas Movies

I live about an hour from Bethlehem, PA. When I saw that there was a Christmas movie called Miracle In Bethlehem, PA, I was intrigued. It wasn’t actually filmed in Bethlehem, of course. It was filmed in Canada. Ah well.

Mary Ann (Laura Vandervoort) is a lawyer who is waiting to adopt a baby. After months of waiting, a baby in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania becomes available. Mary Ann drives to pick her up but gets stranded in Bethlehem due to a severe snowstorm. With no room in any of the local hotels, the new mom and her baby end up staying with Joe (Benjamin Ayres), a mechanic who has lost direction in his life since his father’s death.

While I understand that this movie was supposed to be an analog to the story of Jesus, it was a little offensive that a white woman so intent on adoption was insisting on adopting a baby. There are a lot of children in the system and, as they get older, it’s harder and harder for them to get adopted because people only want to adopt babies. Maybe we don’t normalize only adopting babies.

Obviously, since this is the story of Jesus, it is very heavy handed with its use of God and church. It’s a little annoying but, considering Jesus was the point of the movie, it’s understandable. It does make it a little less appealing to certain demographics though. Or maybe this was Hallmark’s way of saying they haven’t completely dumped God for LGBTQ+ stories.

Rating: At least it’s not a manger

Christmas In The Wilds | 2022 Christmas Movies

What happens when you are in the wilderness and everything goes wrong? Nothing. Nothing happens.

Buck (Victor Zinck Jr) works for the Rescue Services for Wayne Forest. His girlfriend, Jessica (Kaitlyn Leeb), is spending Thanksgiving with his family when he gets called away to help rescue some stranded skiers in Avalon County. Instead of returning home, Buck chooses to spend a few weeks helping his old work partner, Meg (Jennifer Mote), clear some snow from the mountains to avoid avalanches. When he can’t get back home on Christmas Eve due to an impending storm, Jessica decides to go to him.

For a movie called Christmas In The Wilds, it was surprisingly boring. Every time the movie tried to make a new conflict interesting, it failed hard. Buck can't fly his plane out of Avalon County because he’s low on fuel and the fuel truck can’t get in due to snow. When Jessica decides to drive her Jeep to him, they decide to meet halfway at a family cabin. Buck and Meg take snowmobiles while Jessica drives. Jessica crashes her Jeep and changes to a sled pulled by dogs. Buck crashes his snowmobile so has to share with Meg. When the three finally meet up in the middle of nowhere, Meg decides to take one of the dogs to get a drink at the river and lets the dog step into a fox trap. Meg takes the injured dog back while Buck and Jessica continue to the cabin. But then the couple has to cross a raging river and Buck falls in and…..do you see where I’m going with this?

EVERYTHING goes wrong in this movie. And none of it is interesting because they just leap up from one issue only to run into another problem. The writers should have had someone be injured and stay injured. Like maybe Buck got hurt and Jessica had to pull him on a sled or something. But nope. Buck got injured in the snowmobile crash but we would never know because he’s perfectly fine. Then Buck, who works in RESCUE SERVICES, says it’s fine if they cross this ranging river in the middle of December? Buck is stupid.

Don’t watch Christmas In The Wilds. It’s stupid and annoying and annoyingly stupid.

A Christmas Together With You | 2021 Christmas Movies

A Christmas Together With You could have easily been a non-Christmas movie. I actually think that this was written as a regular Hallmark romantic movie but then someone somewhere decided they needed another Christmas flick so they added some Christmas stuff to this one. And that is OK.

Megan (Laura Vandervoort) runs a small café in town. Frank (Harry Lennix), one of her regular customers, tells her about his long lost high school sweetheart. Since neither of them have holiday plans, Megan decides that they are going to track down Frank’s sweetheart, Claire (Liza Huget), so he can profess his love to her.

If you tune into the Hallmark Christmas movies to be inundated with Christmas decor and festivities, you aren’t going to find them here. Sure, there’s a Christmas tree getting decorated and there is one scene where they go caroling but that is pretty much it. A Christmas Together With You focuses more on the search for Claire than it does Christmas. As someone who isn’t a giant fan of Christmas, I’m glad they toned down the holiday cheer for this one.

On the romance side of things, the movie mostly revolves around Frank and Claire. We do get a little romance from Megan and Steve (Niall Matter) but they aren’t the main couple in the movie. They honestly don’t interact all that much so I’m not really sure why they fell in love. Unless Megan just likes his dog a lot. I’m not sure they would even know each other’s names if it wasn’t for the dog.

The down side of this movie is the inaccuracies in the script. Frank shows us a black and white photo of him and Claire from high school. While we couldn’t see her full outfit, it looked like the two of them were dressed rather formally. He was in a tie and jacket and she seemed to be wearing a nicer dress. Then Frank claims this is 1971. I’m not sure the photo is time-period appropriate. It looked like it was more 1950s than 1970s. Also, Megan talks about going to culinary school but we don’t see her make anything more difficult than a green bean casserole. (Please note: you can get the recipe for a green bean casserole off of the back of a can of green beans.) She talks about wanting to own a restaurant but we don’t actually see her having any of those skills. Yes, she cooks a dinner for 30 people. That does not make one a chef.

With all of that in mind, I’m not sure A Christmas Together With You is worth watching. I mean, I would watch it because I’m a fan of Niall Matter. I don’t think there’s another reason to watch it unless you are into slow-burning storylines. Because this one does run slow.

The Christmas Exchange | 2020 Christmas Movies

Is it a good sign when a Lifetime movie steals the plot of a 2006 theatrically released movie? Because this movie is totally The Holiday on a budget.

Molly (Laura Vandervoort) wants a whirlwind British romance. Patrick (Rainbow Sun Francks) wants to get away from his hectic life in London so he can start writing his book. The two swap their houses for the holiday season. As they continue to communicate via text messages, Molly and Patrick find themselves falling in love.

I liked this movie for the most part. Both Vandervoort and Francks are good actors. My problem mostly lies with Molly’s character. She spends the entire movie fawning over this one romance novel that was turned into a movie. Though some flashbacks, we learn that she has been reading/watching this for over 20 years! Maybe it’s time to move on. Though, of course, this is why she has totally romanticized London and relationships with British men. I mean, one of the items on her to-do list is “a date with an English gentleman.” Seriously?

Adding onto Molly’s immature view of relationships, her grandmother had told her this romantic story of how her parents met. Unfortunately, her parents had passed away so there was no way for her to verify what her grandmother said. When she’s in London, she meets an old friend of her father’s who reveals that her grandmother straight up lied to her. Molly reacts to this….by losing her mind. She locks herself in Patrick’s flat where she cries her eyes out. I don’t understand why she is so invested in the story. It didn’t seem to make her feel closer to them or anything. The story was just romantic.

Even with Molly’s shortcomings, The Christmas Exchange is a pretty good movie. As long as you can overlook her emotional immaturity, you should enjoy this. At least there aren’t any princes involved!