Based on the wildly popular beach read of the same name by Emily Henry, “People We Meet on Vacation” is Netflix’s latest vapid attempt at reviving the rom-com genre. Told in a nonlinear format, we follow frenetic travel writer Poppy (Emily Bader) 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). 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.
When Alex finally breaks off with his on-again, off-again high school sweetheart, Sarah (Sarah Catherine Hook), just before his brother’s 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.
While this premise could have had potential, the resulting film mostly feels as if you put “When Harry Met Sally…”, “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” and “One Day” in a blender, mixed it with a few scenes from “The Notebook,” but removed any sort of character or world building in the process.
Director Brett Haley, who brought both visual panache and emotional depth to the Netflix YA adaptation “All the Bright Places” a few years ago, and crafted strong character-driven indie dramas “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “The Hero,” and “Hearts Beat Loud” 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’s 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’s larger-than-life behaviour. He’s capable of giving the camera dozens of emotions at one with his face, but you wouldn’t know that because in the most dramatic scenes, his face is the same size as the back of Bader’s head in these disastrous medium shots.
On top of the film’s boring visual language, the script, with three writers—Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo—gives 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‘s British accent and ability to wear couture are used as shorthand for sophistication, but that’s 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’t even get a name, let alone a second scene.
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’t help but think back to the various scenes in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” 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’ body language; you can tell their dynamics are well thought out. It helps that Michael’s dad was played by the great character actor M. Emmet Walsh. Here, Alex and David’s father (Ian Porter) might as well be a glorified extra; he makes so little impact in the short time he’s on screen. Poppy’s parents (Alan Ruck, Molly Shannon) are similarly underdeveloped, yet are inexplicably given a few scenes to showboat. In one scene, her mom makes a reference to “Never Been Kissed,” presumably solely because Molly Shannon wanted to remind everyone that she was once in “Never Been Kissed.”
It’s all just really bizarre, limp copies of better films. Ultimately, “People We Meet On Vacation” 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’s 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’s a place Alex loves and one where Poppy has bad memories, but other than one generic tree-lined street, we don’t even get a chance to see the town, its charms, or its offenses.
It’s 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’ve proven themselves to me so much more capable in indies like “Fresh Kills” and “Plainclothes.” Thankfully, they can only go up from here.
