Poppy loves the song “Forever Your Girl” by Paula Abdul, but Alex hates the saxophone. Alex loves his hometown in Ohio, but Poppy hates feeling tied down. Poppy hates running; Alex loves it. Poppy loves spontaneity; Alex hates it.
Poppy loves Alex; Alex loves Poppy.
People We Meet On Vacation (2026) is the latest hit romantic comedy to join the Netflix catalogue. Adapted from Emily Henry’s popular romance novel of the same title, the movie tells the story of Alex (Tom Blythe) and Poppy (Emily Bader), two longtime best friends who seemingly have nothing in common. Alex is firm and pragmatic, gravitating toward stability and comfort over pipe dreams. Poppy, on the other hand, is a free-spirited travel writer who spends her days skipping in and out of expensive hotels and villas on the dime of R&R, the travel magazine she writes for. Their relationship is sustained by their annual summer vacations. The pair upholds this tradition for eight years until a trip to Tuscany unexpectedly detonates their friendship and leaves their present-day relationship with unresolved tension.
The film unfolds through a series of flashbacks, jumping between vibrant trips to the Canadian mountainside, the lively streets of New Orleans, and various scenic European cities, tracing Poppy and Alex’s relationship from their initial New England meet-cute to the present day. Structurally, it’s familiar and effective.
Unfortunately, the film falls flat in the one crucial area in which a rom-com can’t afford to stumble: chemistry. Blythe, who delivered a compelling performance in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023), is surprisingly stale as Alex. While occasionally likeable, his performance reads less “loveable, old soul” and more “cranky bore.” Leading lady Bader is certainly charming, but she’s bogged down by the film’s writing of her character. Beautiful, spontaneous, and perhaps a little too emotionally candid, Poppy is an unfortunate victim of manic-pixie-dream-girl syndrome, with her easy-going disposition used as a tool to bring Alex out of his shell.
The novel, told from Poppy’s perspective, gives readers a look into her inner world, but the film doesn’t adapt to provide that same internal context. Poppy is inarguably the main character, but we get to know very little outside of what she tells Alex, and this is detrimental to their on-screen relationship. The characters rarely sink to true emotional lows, and when they do, substantial narrative foundation is nowhere to be found, giving the audience little to root for. And when the high-stakes moments do occur—a culminating fight, a kiss in the rain, a breathless sprint to declare one’s love—they lack the charged passion that propels you out of your seat to scream, “Go! Tell him you love him!” The dynamic that results is slightly cute but mostly imbalanced, confusing, and, frankly, underwhelming.
Aside from its characters, the film’s plot leaves a number of flagrant unanswered questions. How have the two leads never met at the beginning of their story, despite coming from the same “small town?” The town, Linfield, is described as tiny and provincial—and yet is shown to be an inexplicably large suburb with two high schools. Also, why does Poppy only meet Alex’s long-term girlfriend seven years into their friendship? Like their lack of chemistry, many—though not all—of these issues are casualties of the imperfect process of adapting the novel to the small screen. Between the lack of first-person narration and plot details that didn’t make the final cut, the film forces audiences to fill in the gaps that should never have been left.
That being said, People We Meet on Vacation is undeniably stunning. It deftly escapes the flat, blown-out curse that afflicts its peers in the modern-day rom-com genre. Instead of appearing dreary and overexposed, the film employs lighting and color grading that add to the story in addition to simply illuminating the actor’s faces. The film is saturated with warm, incandescent light that breathes a feeling of intentionality into each shot. It’s almost beautiful enough to make you forget the plot’s shortcomings. Key word: almost.
A more disappointing post-production tool at the film’s disposal is its score. The movie certainly has a killer soundtrack—“Hang With Me” by Robyn is a song that deserves a spot in any movie. However, by the one-hour mark, when Taylor Swift’s “august” and boygenius’ “Cool About It” play back-to-back, it starts to feel tired. If we’ve learned anything from The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-2025), it’s that a good needle drop can be a fast track to virality. But if filmmakers want your heart to swoon, their best bet is through an adrenaline-filled score. However, People We Meet on Vacation’s score, composed by Keegan DeWitt, sounds more similar to the songs in a reality TV show or whatever might pop up upon searching “copyright-free music” on YouTube. The weak score, intermittently placed throughout the movie, reminds viewers that they are, at the end of the day, watching a Netflix Original.
On the surface, People We Meet on Vacation gets a lot right. It’s a beautiful movie with equally beautiful romantic leads, and its use of classic romance tropes—friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, only one bed—are nothing if not entertaining. But on a deeper level, it struggles to fully and earnestly translate its source material to a new medium, letting core details get lost in the mix. The film emerges as pleasant and occasionally endearing, but it’s missing something. And, regretfully, it is that something—chemistry, depth, and thrill—that marks the difference between a good rom-com and a great one.
