Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A California Christmas: City Lights’ on Netflix, a Generic Sequel to a Generic Holiday Rom-Com

Netflix’s 2020 rom-com A California Christmas was apparently so successful/cheap to make that a sequel follows hot on its heels a year later: A California Christmas: City Lights. The burgeoning California Christmas Cinematic Universe is the product of screenwriter and star Lauren Swickard and her hubby/co-star Josh Swickard, who play a country girl and a city boy who fell in love and are makin’ it work. Good for them! The first movie deposited the hunky rich womanizing San Francisco fella on the struggling dairy farm of the humble sweet smart Petaluma gal, and after a variety of vaguely holiday-centric light-to-medium dramatic travails, they lived happily ever after. Or not – as the case may be with City Lights, which proves that just because two people are attractive doesn’t mean they live on bliss all the time.

A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS: CITY LIGHTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A YEAR HAS PASSED. Callie Bernet’s (Lauren Swickard) cattle ranch is now also a successful vineyard, which tells us that fate had a hand in that plot development, since her name is practically “Cabernet.” (Is that an intentional joke? I’m gonna say yes.) And her beau Joseph (Josh Swickard) is her new “ranch hand,” which tells us he’s giving her a hand on the ranch, if you know what I mean. Cue up a shot of shirtless Joseph lugging a big bale of hay, because that’s hot work. HOT. Five minutes into the movie, he’s thrown on a button-down and dropped to one knee and proposed, and frankly five minutes is a very long time in a movie like this. She says yes, and who can blame her, because Joseph is one moist slab of banana bread.

Except. A complication occurs with Joseph’s old life in The City, requiring him to put on a white sportcoat over a pale blue hoodie, white pants, Italian loafers and no socks (is that also a joke? I’m gonna say yes), and helicopter back to take care of the family business, VA Enterprises, which is a megabucks real estate conglomerate that’s probably gentrified 100,000 American blocks by now. Callie goes along with him, and when they land, she snatches the Ferrari keys and drives them through San Francisco, which strikes me as unwise, because a Ferrari ain’t exactly and F-150, and also the hills, the hills, so many hills, but hey, this is a fantasy movie, right? Callie leaves her cows-and-wine business in the hands of her bestie Brandy (Raquel Dominguez) and goofball property manager Manny (David Del Rio), who you know are gonna inevitably roll in the hay, you can just sense the sexy tension, and also keep an eye on Callie’s younger sister, Hannah (Natalia Mann).

Upon landing the Ferrari, Callie, thrust into highfalutin city life, learns that Joseph is a San Fran Society Bro who used to plow through the babes, sometimes more than one at a time, and she somehow doesn’t dump him on the spot, possibly because the hotel they’re staying in is ludicrously swank, and the rock on her finger could feed every citizen in Ecuador, and also maybe he’s changed. So there’s some fish-outta-water feelings that get smoothed over a little when they decide to get married in three weeks on Christmas Eve, which reminds us, hey, isn’t this a Christmas movie? It doesn’t really seem like a Christmas movie, since there’s no snow, no caroling, no shopping, no baking cookies and barely a glimpse of a roll of wrapping paper in the background – but there is a live-action Nativity scene in a soup kitchen in a very dumb subplot that illustrates how Callie is a Person of Depth.

At least the Virgin Mary and her ailing donkey give Callie something to do, since Joseph is swamped with the debits and the credits and such at VA Enterprises, which is run by Joseph’s ex, who’s trying to drive a wedge between our intrepid protag couple. So the lovin’ between them is good until it ain’t, and when it ain’t, not even halcyon memories of a trying-on-wedding-dresses montage can salvage it. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Hannah falls down and hurts herself and can’t reach her sister, and Manny fantasizes in slo-mo about Brandy in a pair of Daisy Dukes until the soundtrack produces that FZWOOP record-scratch effect and when he comes to he nearly barfs as he watches her go shoulder-deep into a cow’s vag. We never learn if the calf came along in time for Christmas, but never fear, Callie and Joseph will resolve their troubles before the yule log turns to ash.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I thought Hallmark had cornered the market on this cornball holiday schmaltz? Shouldn’t this be a vehicle for Danica McKellar or Lacey Chabert? Am I amiss for not fully participating in the intentionally cheeseball feelgood holiday TV movie craze? I feel like the sheer volume of such things only further dilutes the gene pool for watchable Christmas movies.

Performance Worth Watching: Kudos to Dominguez for persevering through the cow scene.

Memorable Dialogue: The razor-sharp wit of one of Joseph’s former frat buddies: “Forrest Gump here, cuz he be run run runnin’ through all the ladies!”

Sex and Skin: Nothing more than implied nookie.

Our Take: If A California Christmas: City Lights had aired on Hallmark, it’d come and go in the runoff slough of holiday-movie TV Guide grid-filler and nobody’d bat an eye. But it’s on Netflix, mingling in the menu alongside Paolo Sorrentino art films and Sandra Bullock dramas that pretend not to be laughable, which gives us full license to be mean to it: But I’ll abstain. ’Tis the season to not be an asshole all the time, as read the Christmas cards I’m sending out this year.

So, even though this movie barely bothers to put a trendy Christmas gnome in the foreground of a shot, and is more of a generic rom-com than a Christmas movie, it exists to be something that plays in the background as you try not to f— up the snickerdoodles this year. It looks bad, the dialogue is wretched, the montages don’t muster up much oomph, it functions on a junior-high emotional level, it appears to be edited by a chimp with a power stapler, the characters are empty vessels with great hair, you’ll poke holes in the plot like it’s Ginsu knives wrapped in tissue paper, the jokes are worthy of side eye squints rather than laughter, and it’s constructed wholly out of cliches.

Shit, I was just mean to it. The movie’s fine. Perfectly fine. Fulfills its intent. It’s a programmer, one hell of a programmer. Nobody here is in it to win an Oscar, or offer fresh insight into the human condition, or rise up to a new level of blandness, or even be entertaining. OK, I’ll stop now.

Our Call: I hereby acknowledge that A California Christmas: City Lights exists, and anyone who watches it knows full well what they’re getting into. If you are one of those people, then by all means STREAM IT as you struggle to put wrapping paper around a Baby Yoda training-wheel bicycle.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream A California Christmas: City Lights on Netflix