Lifetime finally gives us a movie that is a little more realistic. At least in the romance department.
Jackie (Carly Hughes) is a newspaper reporter in San Diego. When her newspaper is bought by Melanie (Marie Osmond), Jackie takes an opportunity to run a small local newspaper in Alaska. The owner of the newspaper, Finn (Rob Mayes), and the town embrace Jackie, showing her what Christmas is really about.
Yes, the newspaper part of the movie is rather thin. Jackie wants to be an editor-in-chief but her only experience is writing mostly fluff articles and having a dad that was a successful reporter? While I understand why she is upset that Melanie wants to bump her back down to Staff Reporter, she should have known it was going to happen. Especially since Melanie’s company is digital-only. They can use a few editors-in-chief to cover all of their brands instead of one for each paper.
As for the newspaper in Alaska, I’m not sure how that was running at all. When Jackie arrives, the only staff are Dolores (Emily Alabi) the photographer and Edna (Aloma Wright) who runs the printing press. Who writes the articles? Finn’s dad wrote for it before he died but that was awhile ago. The paper should have shut down long before Jackie got there.
The only part of the movie that I liked was how the relationship between Jackie and Finn progressed. Instead of suddenly falling in love, the couple spends a lot of time together at the various Christmas events in town. It was a nice change from the slew of Christmas movies where the leads hate each other until the very end when they kiss. The Christmas Edition had quite a few almost kisses that got interrupted, making their relationship a little more believable.
If you are watching these Christmas movies for the romance, this is a good movie to watch. However, if you are looking for something more, this might not be the movie for you.