With A California Christmas, Netflix jumped onboard the cheesy Hallmark/Lifetime train with their own opposites-attract big city business person meets smalltown country person bland-but-reassuring romance fest. As far as these sorts of films go, this is a pretty solid one but, because it’s Netflix, it can also be ever so slightly edgy, chuck in some swear words and even show some sexy, sexy flesh. This was another unexpectedly big hit in Christmas 2020, no doubt also due to the Coronavirus putting the dampers on everyone’s festive season. Considering all the single folk who couldn’t get out to mingle and flirt during 2020, I guess it makes sense that large audiences happily live vicariously through the adventures of two obscenely good-looking people in California wine country.
Here, husband and wife team Josh and Lauren Swickard play the mismatched couple who are all at odds until Christmas magic soon has them doing the no-pants dance. Josh is handsome, rich, motorcycle-riding, womanising dick Joseph, the black sheep son of a powerful businesswoman. Just like Jesper from Klaus, Joseph’s mum decides her freeloading boy is not pulling his weight, so gives him a tough, thankless task. He’s got the two weeks leading up to Christmas to convince the owners of a remote California farm to sign the deeds over. Mom reckons that Joseph is such a smoothie with the ladies that he just might be able to seduce the stubborn young owner into signing.
Following a ludicrous bit of mistaken identity that sees Joseph hired as a ranch hand and assisting with the birthing of a baby cow, he finds himself undercover and falling for cute but obstinate farm owner Callie (Lauren Swickard). Meh.
Thankfully, there’s a far more entertaining subplot that follows Manny (David Del Rio), the real ranch hand whose job Joseph pinched, engaging in some riotous Trading Places-style antics. To keep Manny quiet and not blow his cover, Joseph pays the carefree, videogame-loving dude off and lets him hang out in his posh mansion, where he strikes up a funny bromance with Joseph’s droll driver/assistant/hetero life-mate Leo (Ali Afshar). The bits with these two just goofing around are the highlight of the film, a welcome tonic to the predictable but undeniably smouldering romance tale.
The more I think about it, it seems as though this one was cooked up in a lab by Xmas RomCom robots making sure all the correct boxes have been ticked, like one of those online Captcha forms. It’s all too bland and calculated and the leads, though gorgeous, lack that little bit of ‘oomph’ you get with a Candace Cameron Bure or a Rachel Boston or someone like that.
The film hits all the usual beats - romance blooms, truth comes out, he must find some dubious and completely unfeasible way to compensate and will save the day just in time for the Christmas day deadline - why is the deadline always Christmas in these things? Who’s even going to be in the office to do the admin on all these last minute deals?
A California Christmas feels a touch smarter than most Hallmark/Lifetime efforts, has a solid quality of acting and filmmaking, yet never does a single thing that surprises or excites me. I don’t hate it but will almost certainly never watch it again. It really puts the ‘Meh’ in ‘Merry Christmas’. Then again, it’s already spawned a sequel, rushed into production for Christmas 2021, so what do I know?
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