Released just as the weather turns to freezing and we’re all daydreaming of an escape, Netflix’s early January romcom People We Meet on Vacation is at the very least smartly timed. Produced as part of the streamer’s Sony deal, it benefits from some real studio gloss (proper lighting!) and as Polo & Pan’s perfectly balmy Nana plays over a transporting shot of our heroine lounging on a beach (the song was also used in Netflix’s underrated Christmas romcom Let it Snow), I was ready to relax with her. But what a brief escape it turned out to be …
The adaptation of Emily Henry’s much-loved 2021 novel has the superficial trappings all in check (eyes with permanent twinkles, unrealistic main character job in this climate, more easily affordable Taylor Swift song on the soundtrack) but no heart or soul to go with it. There’s simply nothing to root for or care about or grasp on to, just the limp tracing of something we’ve seen many many times before. Its closest comparison would be When Harry Met Sally, a similar journey that turns friends into lovers over a fairly epic time span (the pair even meet in the exact same way, forced to drive home together from college). But what felt lived in and genuinely human back in 1989 now feels shallow and synthetic in 2026, a grim start to the year for a genre I keep hoping and praying for.
It’s a shame as the root concept isn’t a bad one, in fact in this particularly uninventive time for the romcom, it’s actually pretty good. Our Harry and Sally are Alex and Poppy, played by British Hunger Games actor Tom Blyth and up-and-comer Emily Bader, and after their initial road trip, they make a deal: each year, no matter where they are and what they’re doing with their lives, they will go on a vacation together. The film flips back to some of their summers away, One Day style, and then to where they are now, as Poppy prepares to see Alex again at his brother’s Barcelona wedding. It technically allows for a rich mosaic of memories, each chapter defined by a place that could, in smarter hands, speak to where and who they are at that particular time. But there’s really very little detail or depth to their travels, and instead of insight we get overly familiar, clumsily constructed scenes of them doing karaoke, pretending to be a married couple, skinny-dipping but clothes get lost (!) and drunkenly falling over. Any witty and specific Meg and Billy banter is thrown out the window as early as that initial car ride.
Poppy is less real person and more dog-eared list of romcom cliches, a dated archetype that annoys more than charms. She’s clumsy, messy, late and risk-taking, which, you guessed it, is in contrast to Alex’s nervy, by-the-book rule-follower. It’s not as if great romcoms haven’t come from an almost exact opposites-attract dynamic, it’s just that this one doesn’t feel organic in any way. Poppy’s “adorkable” scrappiness is too inauthentic and uncomfortably forced – so when she does start to feel more relatable, last-act emotions (where is home if you travel so much, will anyone ever accept my idiosyncrasies, how much should I compromise for love), there’s close to zero impact as we don’t buy her as anything but a construct. Bader shows enough of a glimmer to suggest she could work better in something more textured and possibly less comedy-based, but she’s sadly not believable here (she is at least trying compared with a strangely absent Blyth). In a brief sequence, Molly Shannon and Alan Ruck, as Poppy’s parents, bring so much natural charm that we mourn their loss for the rest of the movie.
The script, from romance author Yulin Kuang and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania writers Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo, can’t find a way to justify why the pair wouldn’t just be together from the get-go, and every belated attempt to stop them from realising their connection feels as strained as any attempt to bring humour to the story. It’s disappointing for director Brett Haley, who managed to bring real charm and emotion to his 2018 father-daughter Sundance indie Hearts Beat Loud before he got subsumed into the Netflix YA machine, making two stodgy misfires – All the Bright Places and All Together Now – with this one making it a frustrating three for three. It’s a film about wanderlust and romance that should be a breezy sojourn for those of us who need it right now. Why then does it feel like such a slog?
People We Meet on Vacation is available on Netflix on 9 January
