We find ourselves in an age where romance — not to be confused with love — is manufactured, off screen as much as it is on it. The list of perennial favourites in the Hollywood romantic-comedy genre rarely deviate beyond When Harry Met Sally, Notting Hill, The Notebook, and You’ve Got Mail, and I am not just talking about someone like me who is of a certain vintage. Gen-Z may argue — “What about To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before?” or “Haven’t you watched La La Land?” — and with solid enough reason, but a classic rom-com for the ages has been a long time coming.
And we are still looking. People We Meet on Vacation may be a rare recent film that I have enjoyed a lot more than many other cookie-cutter titles in the genre, but nowhere is it a flawless watch. Not by a mile. It submits to formula and it is annoyingly contrived in parts. But it also comes with a certain feel-good, fuzzy vibe and verve that not many films of late can lay claim to.
Based on Emily Henry’s 2021 The New York Times bestseller, People We Meet on Vacation is the first of five of her novels set to receive the big-screen adaptation treatment. Its roots lie in the tried-and-tested trope of friends turning into lovers — yes, pyaar dosti hain — but in arriving at that point, it does chart an unconventional path, following the unlikely friendship between two completely unlike people and finally throwing up the question that has been evident to everyone around them (including the viewer): could they actually be the perfect romantic match?
Fifteenth-century thinker Nicholas of Cusa, who enunciated the “confidence of opposites” and French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb who noted “opposites attract” for electrical charges, which later somehow got applied to relationships, have kept the wheels of the romance genre (comedy or not) churning over the decades. The law applies to People We Meet on Vacation as well, with free-spirited Poppy (Emily Bader) and routine-stickler Alex (Tom Blyth) finding themselves forced to band together on a road trip from their small town of Linfield in Ohio.
There is initial friction — she blabbers, he mumbles; she is a wild child at heart and in action, but ‘stuck in the mud’ is his life philosophy. However, a warm bond gradually develops between the two and with Poppy, a travel writer leaving the nest soon for more promising big-city horizons, the two pals make a pact to meet for a week at a new destination every summer. Over a decade, that covers the scenic frames of Squamish, New Orleans, Tuscany, and Barcelona, making the film a bit of a travelogue as well, but without trying too hard.
What director Brett Haley does well is to adopt a non-linear narrative. When we first meet our protagonists, we learn that they have been estranged for two years, with Alex’s brother getting hitched, giving them the opportunity to meet after a long gap. Flashbacks of prior summers spent on holiday fill out our knowledge of Poppy and Alex’s bond, teaching us the ins and outs of their friends-to-almost-foes equation.
Heartwarming moments — that platonic yet intense moment in the tent between them, Alex giving up a vacation to rush to an ailing Poppy’s side — are sure to bring on a smile, with none of it feeling deliberately packaged or saccharine sweet.
People We Meet on Vacation does take some time to get to what is an extremely predictable finale — can a rom-com even earn its stripes without a kiss in the rain? — but where it lacks in surprises, the Netflix film makes up for with its agreeable charm.
What also works is the fact that Emily Bader and Tom Blyth are solid choices for their parts. Both have tricky characters to pull off — Poppy could have ended up being frustratingly “too much” (as she describes herself) while Alex could have turned out awfully boring — but individually, and more importantly, collectively, they bring a certain chutzpah to the screen, without losing sight of the script’s intense emotional moments.
People We Meet on Vacation is an interesting title (the same as the book, of course). After all, do we really know someone if we haven’t stayed with them? Or better still, gone on a vacation with them?
My favourite opposites-attract romantic comedy is...
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