Based on the popular novel by Emily Henry and directed by Brett Haley (Hearts Beat Loud, All the Bright Places), People We Meet on Vacation may seem like a cookie-cutter rom-com about male-female best friends who take annual vacations together as an excuse to hang out and catch up on each other’s busy lives. Emily Bader (Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin) plays Poppy, a successful, free-spirited travel writer, who, while in college 10 years earlier, met Alex (Tom Blyth, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) when he offered to give her a ride to their mutual hometown in Ohio.
They didn’t know each other growing up, and both have very different views about going home—he loves it, she doesn’t—so the ride isn’t exactly conflict-free; but by the time they roll into town, they are friends. He has a hometown sweetheart, Sarah (Sarah Catherine Hook), and she has two quirky parents (Alan Ruck and Molly Shannon), but at some point a few months later, they decide to go on a camping trip together as friends, and the adventures begin. They actually make convincing travel buddies—she’s spontaneous and he likes to over-plan everything, yet somehow they click, just not romantically. During the entire 10 years we follow them, Alex is on-again/off-again with Sarah, while Emily dates various guys who are never quite right for her. One can only wonder where this is all headed.
Actually, it’s not as easy to predict as you might think. The framework of People We Meet on Vacation is actually in the present day, as Alex’s brother is about to get married in Europe and it’s clear that Emily and Alex are no longer friendly and haven’t spoken or seen each other for a couple of years. Most of their story is told in flashbacks to various trips they go on together, leading up to a mysterious fateful event that caused a rift between them.
Director Haley does solid work balancing the tone here. The film is, in fact, not a rom-com, but a romantic drama with a few laughs. It takes the relationship seriously but not too seriously, and that’s never more clear than in the scenes of them hanging out and getting to know each other again in the days leading up to the wedding. They hash out what happened a couple of years earlier and get quite honest about where they stand with each other today. And they are forced to confront their own shortcomings as relationship people in the process—she’s afraid of commitment, he’s a little too eager to pair up. It’s also amusing to watch how they behave in the flashbacks when the other person is romantically involved with another who doesn’t know them as well, all of which adds up to a friendship that feels real and relatable.
All of that being said, some parts of the film don’t seem believable and are maybe a bit too cutesy for their own good. Also, as the wedding is wrapping up and it looks like things are headed in the right direction for these two, there’s an argument that seems so phony that it feels like its only purpose is to extend the runtime of the film an extra 10-15 minutes (this thing runs nearly two full hours, and there’s no excuse for that).
Also, as much as I loved seeing Ruck and Shannon, they are barely in the film, and when they are, they are wasted. I could have lived my whole life never seeing Molly Shannon waving a jumbo pack of condoms at her daughter. Moments like that feel dumb, unfunny, and weirdly out of place in the movie. But the two leads charmed me—alone and together—and while I’m not sure I could handle a vacation with either of them, I could easily handle a couple of hours.
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
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