{"id":502872,"date":"2026-01-09T03:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T03:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/502872\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T03:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T03:51:09","slug":"people-we-meet-on-vacation-movie-review-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/502872\/","title":{"rendered":"People We Meet on Vacation movie review (2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Based on the wildly popular beach read of the same name by Emily Henry, \u201cPeople We Meet on Vacation\u201d is Netflix\u2019s latest vapid attempt at reviving the rom-com genre. Told in a nonlinear format, we follow frenetic travel writer Poppy (Emily Bader<\/a>) as she tries to get her groove back when her job is no longer fulfilling. We soon learn that the heart of the problem lies with her college best friend, the introverted Alex (Tom Blyth<\/a>). Ever since meeting cute in college when Poppy joined Alex on a road trip from Boston College back to their hometown of Linfield, Ohio, one summer, the two have spent one week a year on vacation together, both unable to share how they really feel about each other. <\/p>\n

When Alex finally breaks off with his on-again, off-again high school sweetheart, Sarah (Sarah Catherine Hook), just before his brother\u2019s wedding, Poppy impulsively decides to shirk off a work trip to attend the wedding in Barcelona, and possibly finally admit her true feelings for Alex, to him and to herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While this premise could have had potential, the resulting film mostly feels as if you put \u201cWhen Harry Met Sally\u2026\u201d, \u201cMy Best Friend\u2019s Wedding,\u201d and \u201cOne Day\u201d in a blender, mixed it with a few scenes from \u201cThe Notebook,\u201d but removed any sort of character or world building in the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Director Brett Haley<\/a>, who brought both visual panache and emotional depth to the Netflix YA adaptation \u201cAll the Bright Places<\/a>\u201d a few years ago, and crafted strong character-driven indie dramas \u201cI\u2019ll See You in My Dreams,\u201d \u201cThe Hero,\u201d and \u201cHearts Beat Loud<\/a>\u201d before that, seems to be on autopilot here. There is no verve to the edit as the film weaves in and out of the various timelines. The whole film is shot in an extra-wide format without any particular reason. Often, the frame is as empty as the film\u2019s bland attempts at emotionality. He never gives his actors the benefit of a close-up, opting instead for a bunch of lame medium shots. Blyth, in particular, is such an emotive actor; his performance largely lives in his reactions to Poppy\u2019s larger-than-life behaviour. He\u2019s capable of giving the camera dozens of emotions at one with his face, but you wouldn\u2019t know that because in the most dramatic scenes, his face is the same size as the back of Bader\u2019s head in these disastrous medium shots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On top of the film\u2019s boring visual language, the script, with three writers\u2014Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo\u2014gives the characters very little development. We vaguely know what Poppy does: she is a writer for a travel mag called R&R, but what exactly does she write? Reviews? Think pieces? As for her boss, Swapna, actress Jameela Jamil<\/a>\u2018s British accent and ability to wear couture are used as shorthand for sophistication, but that\u2019s all we get from her. Poppy appears to have one other friend (Alice Lee), whom she only sees in one scene, where the two women get yelled at and then make bad decisions during a SoulCycle class. I imagine in the book this character is given more to do, but like most modern rom-coms, this film has forgotten how delicious it is to watch the chemistry between the lead and her sassy best friend. Judy Greer made a whole career out of playing iterations of that character, and yet here the character doesn\u2019t even get a name, let alone a second scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for Alex, we learn that he was pursuing a PhD, which he abandoned to teach at his hometown high school after deciding to build a life there with Sarah. But what was he studying? His family is similarly underdeveloped. His little brother David (Miles Heizer) says Poppy is like family, yet the only scene we see with her and his family occurs at the wedding, and their closeness feels contrived at best. I couldn\u2019t help but think back to the various scenes in \u201cMy Best Friend\u2019s Wedding,\u201d where Jules (Julie Roberts) hangs out with the family of her soon-to-be married best friend, Michael (Dermot Mulroney). In that film, the history of their friendship is told through the ease of their characters\u2019 body language; you can tell their dynamics are well thought out. It helps that Michael\u2019s dad was played by the great character actor M. Emmet Walsh. Here, Alex and David\u2019s father (Ian Porter) might as well be a glorified extra; he makes so little impact in the short time he\u2019s on screen. Poppy\u2019s parents (Alan Ruck<\/a>, Molly Shannon<\/a>) are similarly underdeveloped, yet are inexplicably given a few scenes to showboat. In one scene, her mom makes a reference to \u201cNever Been Kissed,\u201d presumably solely because Molly Shannon wanted to remind everyone that she was once in \u201cNever Been Kissed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all just really bizarre, limp copies of better films. Ultimately, \u201cPeople We Meet On Vacation\u201d is a movie that seems to have been crafted for viewers to turn into steamy fan cams on TikTok and GIF sets on Tumblr. It\u2019s also another film that would rather spend more time in rich destination settings around the globe, than in the small town where these characters both grew up. It\u2019s a place Alex loves and one where Poppy has bad memories, but other than one generic tree-lined street, we don\u2019t even get a chance to see the town, its charms, or its offenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s disappointing to see a filmmaker like Haley lose his touch, especially when it also means two promising young actors like Bader and Blyth are left stranded in such mawkish material when they\u2019ve proven themselves to me so much more capable in indies like \u201cFresh Kills\u201d and \u201cPlainclothes.\u201d Thankfully, they can only go up from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Based on the wildly popular beach read of the same name by Emily Henry, \u201cPeople We Meet on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":502873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-502872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115863111872169807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}