A California Christmas fails to authenticate it’s dramatic heft and provides little substance or ambition to it’s subordinate story. 

It isn’t hard for a film of this nature to feel entirely paraphrased and redounded in story, and this provides everything that’s to be expected from it along with a dramatic punch which missed the mark. The plot runs exactly as anticipated in terms of romance, neither of the main characters are particularly interesting and the chemistry between the actors wasn’t outstanding. The story has some subplots that are interesting on paper but fail to reach their full potential due to weak direction, the storyline of the Mother unfortunately feels shoddy and tonally misplaced. 

The song choice is laughably bad at times, not only do we get short and badly edited montages but the dramatic climax’s are all ruined by off-putting music. The script certainly doesn’t bolster the performances or the story and of course the most noticeable flaw is the film’s unmistaken derivativeness.