Common Sense Media Review
By Jennifer Green
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Holiday wine country romance has love, loss, language.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 13+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
A California Christmas
What's the Story?
Joseph (Josh Swickard) is a wealthy playboy with no real responsibility at his mother's (Julie Lancaster) San Francisco firm in A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS. He's finally given an opportunity to prove himself and earn a major promotion at the company if he can convince a reticent farm owner, Callie (Lauren Swickard), to sell her valuable land in wine country. When he arrives at the farm, Callie and her sister, Hannah (Natalia Mann), mistake him for the new farmhand they were expecting. Posing as Manny in order to gain Callie's confidence, Joseph finds himself slowly warming to the women and their mom, Wendy (Amanda Detmer), who is in the final stages of an incurable cancer. Now he'll have to decide which means more to him -- Callie or closing the deal and getting the promotion.
Is It Any Good?
A California Christmas is predictable and sometimes falls flat, but it's also an easy watch that will find its fans. Don't go looking for holiday spirit, though, as the Christmas season seems like an afterthought. What's more interesting is the wine country setting, which forms part of the film's resolution and rings truer with these characters than their shenanigans on the farm birthing calves and chasing chickens. An appreciation for wine stays present in the connoisseur characters of Leo and Manny, whose sweet male bonding feels like it really wanted to be a romance.
Meanwhile, real-life married couple Josh and Lauren Swickard have obvious chemistry and they both look great on screen, a reality they exploit in a bunch of early scenes where he's topless and she's in short shorts. He seems a little less comfortable in front of the camera, and same goes for the actor playing Callie's local self-appointed bodyguard, Connor. The script, also by Lauren Swickard, teeters between melodrama and romance, which keeps you watching until the end, even if you can guess what will happen from a vineyard's length out.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the setting of the California wine country in A California Christmas. Do you know where this area is in California? Where could you go to find out more information?
Do you think Joseph made good decisions? Where did he go right or wrong, in your opinion?
This movie was filmed during the COVID pandemic of 2020. How do you think they were able to make this movie despite the restrictions?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : December 14, 2020
- Cast : Lauren Swickard , Josh Swickard , Ali Afshar
- Director : Shaun Paul Piccinino
- Inclusion Information : Female Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Romance
- Topics : Friendship , Holidays , Animals
- Run time : 106 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- MPAA explanation : some suggestive material
- Last updated : September 29, 2025
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