Navidades en California: Luces de la ciudad

I love this type of movie, and I love holiday movies so when they come together like this it's great. This one is as much fun as the first one but has a lot more scenery as half the movie is in the city and half on the farm. Lauren and Josh Swickard are great, fantastic chemistry. Ali Afshar is great. Script a lot of fun with many laughs. I wish netflix would just shoot a few of these so we could binge it.

I saw this trending at the top of Netflix and decided to watch it. I honestly loved it. The storyline was entertaining and there were a few good laughs. The chemistry between the two leads is great but Lauren Swickard really carries the film. I'm excited to see what this team does next.

My BF and I were looking for a cozy movie to watch together and chose this. It was exactly what we were looking for. Just a feel good movie that had us smiling throughout. We noticed afterwards that the couple is married in real life and Lauren Swickard also wrote the movie! What an incredible talent!

Since the last one was unexpectedly really good, I was looking forward to seeing this new one as well.

I've watched a handful of Christmas rom-coms and I found that the lines between really good Christmas movies and not good ones are quite thin. This 'A California Christmas' maintains the classic elements of a cheesy Cinderella story, at the same time ,it's not too fantasy like. The scenario seems more grounded; characters facing more realistic challenges.

I still don't like seeing some rather small quarrels treated so dramatic for the sake of the story arch (why don't they try talking out if they love each other?), but I guess that's also a staple of this type of film.

To compensate for that, the two main characters have an amazing chemistry! They really look they care for each other, and willing to compromise for their partner's happiness.

Oh, I love Manny as a comic relief, he does it so well! That's a bonus.

Definitely a step down from the first one. Very formulaic (especially the ending) and some very annoying scenes with Manny. The movie never felt like Christmas time despite the decorations.