People We Meet on Vacation: Has Emily Henry Saved the Rom-Com Genre? - Ila Nabi

The long-awaited adaptation of the novel People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry has finally arrived. I became a fan of Emily Henry back in 2023 when I was in a reading slump. I fell in love with the characters and the plot of the novel. So, when they announced a film adaptation, I was over the moon. Now after waiting for what felt like an eternity, the film is out. As a rom-com enthusiast, I wondered whether this would be up to my standards.

Here is a little summary of it. Alex Nilsen and Poppy Wright first meet when they are pushed together driving back home from college to the fictitious town of Linfield set in Ohio. Poppy is an outgoing, sometimes cringe, travel writer for a fictional magazine called R&R. Alex is an uptight, type-A high school teacher turned professor. The two don’t get along at first because of their opposing personalities but later become best friends. They decide to set aside one week a summer to go on a vacation together. After their vacation in Tuscany goes awry, they stop talking to each other until one day Alex’s brother calls Poppy to invite him to his wedding in Barcelona. The film flops back and forth between the past and present and asks the age-old question: “Can straight men and women be friends?”  

Given the question, this film is a lot like the original rom-com, When Harry Met Sally (1989). 

But in this current film climate, especially given the state of rom-coms, it’s hard to make the comparison. Life isn’t the same as it was in the 1990s and neither is film. This film is certainly not the best rom-com I’ve seen, but I would call it an improvement from what I have seen in the past few years. There is definitely enough romance, but not nearly enough comedy. The personalities of the characters are defined, but wanted to know more about them and what happened on their trips. There is a lack of balance, which is probably what most recent rom-coms struggle with the most. But without it, it’s hard not leaving the viewer asking for more. 

That being said, I enjoyed the performances of Emily Bader and Tom Blyth. Bader had that quality everyone wants in a leading lady, giving a sort of Anna Kendrick-esque quality to the character. Though I’ve only seen Blyth in his breakout film, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023), I really enjoyed seeing him in a more subdued role. Both Bader and Blyth work well for this genre, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them on the screen again. 

Netflix shows and movies often disappoint me with costume and set design, but I was impressed to find that it improved for this film. The locations usually felt less like sets and more like real places or real homes. I also thought the costumes for Poppy were well executed and exactly how I imagined them when reading the books.  As a fan of rom-coms, this one exceeded my expectations. That said, the trajectory of the genre has been pretty bleak and the bar is very low. Given the switches between time, this might have been better as a limited series, similar to what Netflix did with One Day (2024). 

Is it possible that this film saved the genre? Maybe. While the film was certainly entertaining, I wouldn’t count it as genre-defying. Even still, it seems there were a lot of people who did enjoy the film and for rom-com lovers, that’s a good thing! It’s possible that this film will be pointed to as a success. And if one recent rom-com is a success, that just might mean studios will be willing to make more. Regardless if they are good or bad, more rom-coms mean more chances for someone to finally get it right: create the film audiences have been waiting for since the mid-2000s. 

So, is Emily Henry the next Nora Ephron or Nancy Meyers? Well, no. But only because she’s not a screenwriter. Novels and screenplays have fundamentally different structures, making it harder to adapt a book into a satisfying rom-com. I don’t want to shut this film down completely, because it was an honest effort. So much work goes into making a film and a lot of people worked hard to try and resurrect a genre that had been on a downward trend for 20 years. People We Meet on Vacation may not be the rom-com we deserve, but it’s the one we need. It gives us hope, not only for the genre but for the rest of us lost, wandering hopeless romantics starving for something to ground us. 

Directed by Brett Haley 
Screenplay by Yulin Kuang, Nunzio Randazzo and Amos Vernon
Adapted from the novel People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

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Ila Nabi is from Ottawa and is currently studying media and film at Emerson College, Boston. She has written film reviews and critical essays. While comedies are her favorite, she enjoys movies of all kinds.