‘People We Meet on Vacation’ (2026) Netflix Movie Review - Formula With Feeling

If you are always hungry for rom-coms, Brett Haley's People We Meet on Vacation should satisfactorily satiate your appetite. When it comes to ticking this genre's usual boxes, the film checks them off enthusiastically. Are the Boy and Girl incompatible with each other initially? Check. Do the Boy and Girl slowly become best friends? Check. Do Boy and Girl harbor romantic feelings for one another in secret? Check. Does everybody, except for the Boy and Girl themselves, know they should live together happily? Check. Do the Boy and Girl end up together eventually? I don't think I need to answer that question after all this.

Based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation is fairly formulaic, but the formula is nonetheless infused with feeling. Credit must be given to the wonderful leads, Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, who somewhat energize the clichés with their chemistry. As Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen, respectively, the actors don't merely wait for their cues; they hold each other in their eyes. They generate a palpable, sensual atmosphere through their gazes, conversations, and longings. This is why you don't just feel warm and cuddly when they dance at a bar or when one of them misses a flight to take care of the other while they're sick—you also sense discomfort and awkwardness when, for instance, a boyfriend arrives unexpectedly.

Bader and Blyth, in other words, are what you would call the soul of this film. The duo makes the story work; they make it sting and sing. And yet, if People We Meet on Vacation doesn't radiate like a future classic, it's because it doesn't bother to inquire into its leads with much depth or clarity. Poppy, for example, is a travel writer, but all we see of her writing is a short excerpt at the beginning of the film and a resignation letter later on. Neither sample—one bland, the other maudlin—suggests that she is remarkably talented or imaginative.

What's more, thanks to her profession, Poppy enjoys all-expenses-paid trips to various locations, yet what she sees, processes, and learns from new places, cultures, and settings remains largely unexplored in the film. How traveling shapes her perspective, or how she transforms those experiences into her work, is not something the writers (Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo) appear interested in depicting. During one trip, Poppy and Alex even encounter a couple celebrating their honeymoon, but the writer in Poppy never surfaces—she doesn't engage them with interest or curiosity.

Then again, given the story's trajectory, one can safely conclude that Poppy doesn't really learn much from her interactions with friends, strangers, or locals across different cities and countries (she functions like a cog in the plot machine, realizing what she needs only near the finish line). People We Meet on Vacation is simply another rom-com filmed in lush, scenic locations because, well, Netflix. Poppy's profession functions mainly as an excuse to place the characters in aesthetically pleasing settings. Good-looking people in good-looking places sell better, and they appeal to a broad audience that watches these movies to see both their expectations—and the script's—demands fulfilled.

Will that audience listen if I tell them they don't actually need a partner to feel complete, that they can be content and happy in their own company? Probably not. People We Meet on Vacation is not for viewers inclined to think too seriously about their lives, or about how films like these often sell an insidious ideology: that you need a partner in order to be stable, whole, or fulfilled. Anyway, the actors are good. That's a compliment I don't mind giving. Watch the movie solely for Bader and Blyth—they are, unquestionably, the best things about this romantic comedy.

Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times