People We Meet on Vacation, 2026.
Directed by Brett Haley.
Starring Emily Bader, Tom Blyth, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jameela Jamil, Lucien Laviscount, Lukas Gage, Miles Heizer, Alan Ruck, Molly Shannon, Tommy Do, Alice Lee, Spencer Neville, Ian Porter, Madeleine Akua, John Jabaley, and Bethany Anne Lind.
SYNOPSIS:
Poppy wants to explore the world and Alex prefers to stay home with a good book, but somehow they are the very best of friends. They live far apart, but for a decade they have spent one week of summer vacation together.
Mismatched personalities of characters, nevertheless, fated to end up with one another, isn’t just part of the rom-com playbook; it might as well be on page one and highlighted in all caps. It’s most likely the starting point for every one of these stories, and that remains true for director Brett Haley’s People We Meet on Vacation, which is based on the novel by Emily Henry and adapted into a screenplay by the team of Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo. Still sticking to that formula, this film puts a spin on it through the vacation aspect, which tends to flip or alter the duo’s personalities, all while the filmmakers stay true to the genre’s most comforting and crowd-pleasing staples.
Poppy (Emily Bader) is a journalist who routinely travels around the world to report on those work vacations, with little emphasis on the work part. Bullied by her small town so relentlessly as a teenager that it became somewhat impossible to shake a falsified image (she kissed a boy, which then became twisted into a nasty rumor mill of something much more sexual that everyone decided to believe and run with), it’s easy to see why there is no love lost for her hometown and that not only escaping it, but also going on vacation is a means to escape into a different person harmlessly. Everyone is a stranger, and every encounter is most likely one-and-done.
However, Poppy is still stuck in a rut and unsure of which angle she wants to take in her writing about these glamorous trips. It’s freeing, but only temporary, coming home to a somewhat unfulfilling life mired in uncertainty and questions of what could have been. Speaking of that, a wedding has come up that would reunite her with Alex (Tom Blyth), her best friend of eight years, with whom she shared many summer vacations on a platonic level for nearly a decade. Throughout that time, each of them was generally in on-and-off relationships, close to one another but also so different that neither bothered to suggest they try to see whether love could bloom between them.
Initially hesitant to show up at the wedding at all, Poppy talks herself into attending, which triggers flashbacks throughout her and Alex’s interactions before the ceremony, depicting how they met and how each vacation shaped their dynamic, revealing different sides. Pragmatic and more concerned with University studies, Alex is somewhat uptight, which is something that gradually goes away as Poppy urges him to let go on vacation and be bold. As for Poppy, living life filled with vacations has also skewed some perception of how daily life should be. Rather than functioning as a story that pushes one character to change entirely, the filmmakers use the vacation concept to the characters’ advantage, nudging them towards a healthier balance.
That any of this works at all is also a surprise, not only because of the corny tone and predictable trajectory of everything here, but also because some of the jokes and vacation mishaps are so telegraphed. People We Meet on Vacation certainly has a refreshing structure, using flashbacks to build up to a point where things changed for the worse forever, which is far more preferable than generic dysfunctional wedding shenanigans. It also helps that the filmmakers aren’t interested in blowing up some of the drama, typically keeping it grounded and allowing both Poppy and Alex to come across as real people with real-life complications. It’s also a necessary juxtaposition to some of the broad comedy.
Again, though, the chemistry and charm from the performances rise above the familiarity of the plot. People We Meet on Vacation is both a rom-com throwback and one that uses its clichés as a strength, even for cynics coming in; it makes good use of the playbook.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
