Netflix has built a steady assembly line of soft rom-coms over the past few years, and People We Meet on Vacation fits the template almost too cleanly. It is an adaptation of Emily Henry’s novel, glossy and travel-poster pretty, with luxurious vacation spots doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Brett Haley has made sweeter, more grounded work in Hearts Beat Loud and All the Bright Places, but this one feels Netflix-ified into something airless and mechanical, like it is engineered to be left on in the background rather than actually watched.
The setup is simple yet overwrought. Poppy (Emily Bader) and Alex (Tom Blyth) are longtime friends who have made a tradition of taking summer trips together. She is a free-spirited New York City travel writer. He is type A and structured to the point of rigidity. The film toggles between their earlier vacations and a present-day reunion in Barcelona, where Alex has called off his engagement to his fiancée Sarah and Poppy keeps poking at the reasons why. None of this is inherently broken, but the movie never finds a rhythm that makes their history feel textured instead of prepackaged for the sake of plot convenience.
Bader is the closest the film comes to a pulse. Her bubbly energy works for Poppy, and she at least gives you someone you want to follow from city to city. The problem is that the movie needs an equal counterweight from Blyth, and his take on Alex is bafflingly flat. He plays “structured” as straight-faced and expressionless, so the central pairing feels mismatched in a way that is not tension, just dead air. It is hard to buy a slow-burn romance when the chemistry is not even simmering, and the bright, lively settings only underline how inert their scenes can be.
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The time jumping does not help. The flashbacks arrive in bite-sized chunks that feel like highlights rather than lived-in memories, and the emotional beats rarely get room to breathe. I can imagine the structure working better on the page, where Emily Henry can live inside interior thoughts and let the quiet moments stretch. On screen, it reads as a string of checkpoints designed to manufacture longing. The stakes are low, the destination is obvious, and the movie still struggles to make the journey feel romantic, funny, or even particularly sexy.
For a January Netflix rom-com, this is about what I expected, and I also know I am not the target audience. Still, even by those standards, People We Meet on Vacation is a dud. The locations are nice, Emily Bader tries to keep it light on its feet, and very little else lands.
Score: 3/10
People We Meet on Vacation (2026)
- Cast: Emily Bader, Tom Blyth, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jameela Jamil, Lucien Laviscount, Lukas Gage, Miles Heizer, Alan Ruck, Molly Shannon
- Director: Brett Haley
- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Runtime: 118 minutes
- Rated: PG-13
- Release Date: January 9, 2026
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