Lauren Swickard
Callie
Overview
Follows Callie and Joseph one year after they fell in love, now running a dairy farm and winery, but their romance is threatened when business and family obligations call Joseph back to the city.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
6 min readThe Ranch That Love Built (And the Baby Who Almost Broke It)
I’ll admit it: I went into A California Christmas: City Lights expecting a Hallmark clone with a Netflix budget. What I got instead was something weirder—a Christmas movie that forgot to be festive, a rom-com that kept tripping over its own feet, and a sequel that felt less like a story and more like a family vacation slideshow. And yet, somewhere in the middle of all that, I found myself oddly charmed.
Not by the plot (which is thinner than the frosting on a grocery-store cookie), but by the sheer, unapologetic earnestness of it all. This is a movie that believes in love, in family, in second chances, and—most of all—in the idea that if you just keep showing up, everything will work out. Even if you’re breastfeeding between takes.
The film picks up a year after the first A California Christmas, with Callie (Lauren Swickard) and Joseph (Josh Swickard) running a dairy farm and winery in the golden hills of Petaluma. Their life is a Pinterest board come to life: sun-dappled vineyards, cozy barns, and a love so wholesome it practically glows. But then Joseph’s family calls him back to San Francisco for a business deal, and suddenly the movie remembers it’s supposed to have conflict.
What follows is a series of misunderstandings so predictable they feel like they were written by an algorithm trained on 1990s sitcoms. Joseph hides his city obligations from Callie. Callie assumes the worst.
There’s a fight. There’s a breakup. There’s a grand gesture.
You’ve seen this movie before. Hell, you’ve seen this scene before.
But here’s the thing: the Swickards sell it. Not because they’re giving Oscar-worthy performances, but because they’re not really acting. Lauren and Josh Swickard are married in real life—they met on the set of Roped in 2017, fell in love, and now have a baby together.
And that history seeps into every scene. When Joseph reaches for Callie’s hand, it’s not a scripted gesture; it’s the kind of absentminded intimacy that comes from years of shared grocery runs and inside jokes. When they argue, there’s a flicker of real frustration in their eyes, like they’ve had this fight before—just not in front of a camera crew.
It’s the kind of chemistry you can’t manufacture, and it’s the only reason this movie doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own clichés.
The problem is that the script doesn’t trust that chemistry. Instead of letting the Swickards’ real-life bond carry the story, it keeps throwing obstacles in their path—most of them so flimsy they’d dissolve if the characters just talked to each other for five seconds. The central conflict hinges on Joseph keeping a business trip secret from Callie, which is the kind of misunderstanding that only exists in rom-coms and bad marriages.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.0/10
"A lightweight, copy-paste Christmas sequel whose sincere lead chemistry and goofy sidekicks only partly offset a thin, barely festive story."
Romance devotees enjoy the real-life couple’s natural chemistry and find the relationship sweet and easy to watch, with some appreciating the city-versus-farm contrast and the sillier, horny edge compared with typical holiday comfort movies. At the same time, the sequel is widely seen as a step down from the first, recycling the same beats with weaker pacing, overcooked misunderstandings, and almost no real Christmas atmosphere. latestnetflix.com's take is that Opinions split between those who accept it as cute, cozy background viewing and those who consider it unnecessary, corny, and dragged out by avoidable drama.
What viewers praise
- Genuine lead chemistry The relationship between Callie and Joseph feels warm and believable, giving emotional weight to an otherwise familiar plot.
- Scene-stealing comic relief Side characters like Manny and Leo are praised as MVPs who bring most of the laughs and energy, sometimes overshadowing the leads.
- Easy, cozy watch For those in the mood for simple comfort viewing, the film plays as a cute, undemanding romantic escape that hits expected feel-good notes.
- Glamorous San Francisco setting The city backdrop and mix of farm and urban life provide pleasant scenery and a bit of escapist glamour.
Common complaints
- Rehashed and predictable The story is repeatedly described as a clone of the first film, with clichéd rom-com conflicts and no real surprises.
- Weak Christmas vibe Despite the title, the movie has very little holiday feel, leaving some wondering why Christmas is even in the name.
- Forced relationship drama Misunderstandings, secrets, and lack of communication drive the conflict in ways that feel contrived and easily solvable if characters simply talked.
- Mixed views on acting and tone Several viewers find the acting wooden, the dialogue corny, and some subplots cringe or stretched out, making the film feel unnecessary.
Recommended for
Cozy holiday rom-com watchers Lauren and Josh Swickard followers Corny romance enthusiasts Light background-movie seekers Fans of comic sidekicks City-versus-country love stories
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsA year after the ranch movie, they sat behind Sandra Bullock on Netflix
On December 20, 2021, HuffPost's public Netflix ranking put A California Christmas: City Lights in second place among movies on the service. The Unforgivable, with Sandra Bullock, held first for a second week. Three other holiday titles were on the same board, A Boy Called Christmas and both Christmas Chronicles films. The Swickard sequel had been live four days. Digital Journal, two days later, said it logged 22.latestnetflix.com's read is that 8 million viewing hours in the first week, reached the Top 10 in 73 countries, and was the No.1 holiday film on Netflix that week. Wikipedia repeats those figures. 
, ,
Netflix itself sold a simpler pitch. Callie and Joseph, a year after they fell in love, leave the dairy farm and winery for family business in San Francisco, with a Christmas Eve wedding hanging over the trip. Lauren Swickard wrote it and plays Callie. Josh Swickard plays Joseph. Shaun Paul Piccinino directed. Ali Afshar, David Del Rio, Natalia Mann, and Amanda Detmer came back. TMDB lists a December 16, 2021 U.S. date and a 1 hour 45 minute runtime. ,
The sequel was ordered while the first film was still sitting in the U.S. top 10.
Variety had the exclusive on December 22, 2020. Ali Afshar's ESX Entertainment fast-tracked City Lights after what the trade called the unexpected popularity of A California Christmas. Filming was due to start in early 2021 in Petaluma, Sonoma County, and nearby northern California. Lauren would write again. Piccinino would direct again. Daniel Aspromonte would produce again. Variety also noted a Forbes ranking that put the first film ahead of Ryan Murphy's The Prom and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, then flagged that Forbes' list was not verified by Netflix. 
The same piece reminded readers that Lauren and Josh are married in real life. They met in 2017 on Afshar's Roped, a romance about a councilman's daughter and a cowboy from a traveling rodeo. Josh was already a General Hospital regular. The City Lights gossip was never a secret-relationship leak. The marriage was the marketing. ,
Lauren told Hollywood Life she did not have a sequel in mind "at all whatsoever" when she wrote the first movie. That, she said, made the second script harder. "The plot wrote itself once we came up with the concept," she added. "No hints that we are going to get a sequel until after it did so well." Asked about a third chapter, Josh said they would love that. "There's nothing written in pen. There might be some things in pencil, but we cannot confirm that anything would happen after the second one." A third film has not been announced.
On a Digital Journal call after the launch, the couple called Piccinino family. "We couldn't imagine a better director to make movies with. We would like to work with him forever." Josh boiled the movie down to forgiveness and the idea that change is inevitable. "It's an hour and a half of laughing, and perhaps a couple of 'awes'." Lauren named the theme of this chapter of her life "Positive Change." The San Francisco stretch still plays as a Christmas card with a wedding date on it.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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