People We Meet on Vacation assessment – Netflix journey romcom is a uninteresting journey | Romance movies

Released simply because the climate turns to freezing and we’re all daydreaming of an escape, Netflix’s early January romcom People We Meet on Vacation is on the very least well timed. Produced as a part of the streamer’s Sony deal, it advantages from some actual studio gloss (correct lighting!) and as Polo & Pan’s perfectly balmy Nana performs over a transporting shot of our heroine lounging on a seashore (the music was additionally utilized in Netflix’s underrated Christmas romcom Let it Snow), I used to be able to chill out along with her. But what a quick escape it turned out to be …

The adaptation of Emily Henry’s much-loved 2021 novel has the superficial trappings all in examine (eyes with everlasting twinkles, unrealistic foremost character job on this local weather, extra simply reasonably priced Taylor Swift music on the soundtrack) however no coronary heart or soul to go along with it. There’s merely nothing to root for or care about or grasp on to, simply the limp tracing of one thing we’ve seen many many instances earlier than. Its closest comparability could be When Harry Met Sally, an identical journey that turns buddies into lovers over a reasonably epic time span (the pair even meet in the very same manner, compelled to drive residence collectively from school). But what felt lived in and genuinely human again in 1989 now feels shallow and artificial in 2026, a grim begin to the 12 months for a style I maintain hoping and praying for.

It’s a disgrace as the foundation idea isn’t a nasty one, actually on this notably uninventive time for the romcom, it’s truly fairly good. Our Harry and Sally are Alex and Poppy, performed by British Hunger Games actor Tom Blyth and up-and-comer Emily Bader, and after their preliminary street journey, they make a deal: every year, regardless of the place they’re and what they’re doing with their lives, they may go on a trip collectively. The movie flips again to a few of their summers away, One Day fashion, after which to the place they’re now, as Poppy prepares to see Alex once more at his brother’s Barcelona marriage ceremony. It technically permits for a wealthy mosaic of reminiscences, every chapter outlined by a spot that would, in smarter fingers, communicate to the place and who they’re at that individual time. But there’s actually little or no element or depth to their travels, and as an alternative of perception we get overly acquainted, clumsily constructed scenes of them doing karaoke, pretending to be a married couple, skinny-dipping however garments get misplaced (!) and drunkenly falling over. Any witty and particular Meg and Billy banter is thrown out the window as early as that preliminary automotive experience.

Poppy is much less actual particular person and extra dog-eared listing of romcom cliches, a dated archetype that annoys greater than charms. She’s clumsy, messy, late and risk-taking, which, you guessed it, is in distinction to Alex’s nervy, by-the-book rule-follower. It’s not as if nice romcoms haven’t come from an nearly precise opposites-attract dynamic, it’s simply that this one doesn’t really feel natural in any manner. Poppy’s “adorkable” scrappiness is just too inauthentic and uncomfortably compelled – so when she does begin to really feel extra relatable, last-act feelings (the place is residence when you journey a lot, will anybody ever settle for my idiosyncrasies, how a lot ought to I compromise for love), there’s near zero influence as we don’t purchase her as something however a assemble. Bader exhibits sufficient of a glimmer to counsel she may work higher in one thing extra textured and probably much less comedy-based, however she’s sadly not plausible right here (she is not less than making an attempt in contrast with a unusually absent Blyth). In a quick sequence, Molly Shannon and Alan Ruck, as Poppy’s mother and father, deliver a lot pure appeal that we mourn their loss for the remainder of the film.

The script, from romance creator Yulin Kuang and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania writers Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo, can’t discover a technique to justify why the pair wouldn’t simply be collectively from the get-go, and each belated try and cease them from realising their connection feels as strained as any try and deliver humour to the story. It’s disappointing for director Brett Haley, who managed to deliver actual appeal and emotion to his 2018 father-daughter Sundance indie Hearts Beat Loud earlier than he acquired subsumed into the Netflix YA machine, making two stodgy misfires – All the Bright Places and All Together Now – with this one making it a irritating three for 3. It’s a movie about wanderlust and romance that needs to be a breezy sojourn for these of us who want it proper now. Why then does it really feel like such a slog?