Film Review: ‘People We Meet on Vacation’ is Yet Another Forgettable Cog in the Streaming Algorithm

It’s been a while since I was this bored in front of a movie, and paying attention to it did not reward me in any way. But such is the case with most Netflix films, designed to be consumed through what many experts in the field describe as “second-screen entertainment.” You do not need to watch it with a concentrated mind to grasp anything from it. 

You can cook, do the dishes, fold your laundry, read a book, be on your phone, play a video game on another screen – it won’t matter, because the dialogues spoken by the characters explain to the audience what they’ve been missing, and what’s currently happening. I didn’t really think this was a thing until I sat through Brett Haley’s People We Meet on Vacation, a thunderously dull adaptation of Emily Henry’s bestselling book of the same name, and realized very quickly that this isn’t a movie made for anyone who actually wants to sit down in front of a screen and watch it. 

People We Meet on Vacation is a film made for people with short attention spans, who would rather watch it through the prism of out-of-context TikTok clips than assimilate the broader picture on any screen without pressing the pause button once. It’s best viewed fragmented, because the pacing of the entire thing is genuinely lethargic, as Haley, a usually reliable filmmaker, sleepwalks through a non-linear story that gives no emotional depth or texture to the central characters of the picture, Alex (Tom Blyth) and Poppy (Emily Bader), two best friends who meet every year for a vacation of a lifetime but are secretly in love with one another. 

I don’t need to sum up the rest of the film, because you probably figured out the rest by reading this short description of the plot. There are no surprises in People We Meet on Vacation, but that’s not necessarily a problem, considering that most rom-coms thrive in clichés and don’t need to reinvent the screenwriting wheel. If they draw interesting characters and track an enveloping romance, the rest of the movie doesn’t really matter. 

But none of the characters are interesting in this adaptation, and their chemistry feels limited, or, dare I say, nonexistent. Blyth and Bader are both decent actors who can undoubtedly hold their own in titles like The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Fresh Kills, but it’s impressive how much they look weary here. 

It’s not for a lack of trying, though, but the screenplay, written by Yulis Kang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo, consistently betrays the solid work they do in front of the camera, because the non-linear structure adopted by Haley consistently halts momentum. The story begins in the present day as Poppy contemplates whether or not she should attend the wedding of David (Miles Heizer), Alex’s brother, after their last vacation didn’t go so well. Haley tries to fill in the gaps through a story that communicates between the past and the present, but it doesn’t work. It might have been more thought out in the book, but the cinematic treatment slows the dramatic progression down and stretches the runtime to excruciating lengths. 

One thinks that, by adopting this structure, Haley will slowly – but interestingly – develop the characters, yet by the time the film ends, we learn nothing new about them. Poppy is a writer for a company called R&R, which is a magazine? Newspaper? Online blog? And is paid to go on vacation by her boss (played by Jameela Jamil), who assigns her to cover what? Alex is a student vying for a PhD in what? Poppy has a friend (played by Rachel Lee), who is introduced at a SoulCycle class and quickly disappears from the picture. She doesn’t even have a name. None of the micro-details seems to matter. Only the vacations, which would’ve been fine if the film had concentrated on this, but since it seems to weave between Poppy and Alex’s current states and their past, more meat around the bone would’ve gone a long way toward making this story feel more tangible and human. 

At least it looks good – there are enough expressive, vivid colors to make them pop off the screen – but the consistent use of medium shots often flattens the romantic tension between Poppy and Alex, making it feel less alive. It’s as I said, it’s a film destined to be watched while doing other things than being rewarded for the time you’re spending in front of it. There are no compositions of note, very few sequences where the film feels like it’s approaching anything compelling, and the sense of alchemy between the two actors practically doesn’t exist. The only sequence that felt lively occurred near the film’s midpoint, when Alex meets Poppy’s parents (played by Molly Shannon andAlan Ruck) for the first time and engages in an awkward discussion. 

In that moment, Alex tries to share with Poppy’s father his fear of flying, but the latter believes he’s talking about popping his cherry. It’s the movie’s only funny scene, and the one where I didn’t feel like my time was being wasted. The rest of People We Meet on Vacation is as forgettable as most of Netflix’s library, which may change the way we watch movies even further if they manage to acquire Warner Bros. Should this happen, the future of this industry would be incredibly grim…

SCORE: ★