Honey, I’m Home!: People We Meet on Vacation and Reviving the Rom-Com

Many great rom-coms ask a question. A question that operates as an obstacle. Something that separates two characters before they even begin to conceptualize the idea of maybe possibly getting together. It’s an incredibly effective device, one that reels us in and forces us to root for a pairing right off the jump, without really knowing much about them, aside from, of course, the way they answer this question. And we want an answer to this question, whatever that answer may be. “Can men and women really be friends?” “Could getting off the train in Vienna with a stranger really be a good idea?” “Is it possible to lose a guy in 10 days? And…you know what, yeah, how exactly would someone even do that?” The new film adaptation of Emily Henry’s People We Meet On Vacation asks a question that seems quite simple at first, but carries a gravity that we ultimately cannot help being pulled in by: “What does it mean to truly come home?”

As someone who simply cannot watch an adaptation of a novel without first reading the source material, I’ve naturally read the Emily Henry classic rom-com (gold-standard, even) and have been DREAMING about the release of this film since its announcement. And I must say, on many accounts, it hit the mark. Of course, it’s no secret that vocalizations of lingering disappointment in certain aspects of this adaptation have arisen. Alex’s lack of depth (his desires in the movie being mainly, and really ONLY, in regards to Linfield, Ohio, and Poppy) and the omission of certain scenes is a bummer, sure. But is that what this is about? Not really. The mark of a “good” adaptation certainly does not singularly lie in its’ accuracy, nor is it required that it retains each and every aspect of the story, as it just simply cannot be expected that a 400 page book can be exactly replicated in 110 minutes. What does factor into the creation of a “good” adaptation, is that the essence of the story remains true to the material. This film does just that. 

Adapting any book into 90-minutes of digestible digitized media is tricky, and losing the heart of a story is typical as themes change and budget requirements dictate certain choices. But the heart of this story remains–and it remains fiercely. While some may say that People We Meet on Vacation’s success lies in part due to the books’ large fanbase, or the humor and overwhelming joy that pulsates beneath the surface, or the captivating performances of Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, it’s no question that it originates a story that feels brand new, while simultaneously familiar. This film feels like a ray of sunshine, a warmth that wraps you up in a cozy, snug embrace, and allows you to feel, almost, as if you are on a vacation of your own. 

People We Meet on Vacation is one of those movies that lets you breathe. The ending is inevitable, a predictable mess of gradual entanglement that eventually leads to a coupling ripe with miscommunication that is finally resolved in the final 10 minutes of the movie. It makes you wait. It allows you to grow agitated, to yell at your screen and pound your fists on your laptop as the girl lets the guy get away. People We Meet on Vacation follows free-spirit Poppy and highly-strung Alex as their strictly platonic friendship inevitably devolves into a deep and heartfelt romance. The story begins as they embark on a disastrous road-trip from Boston to their hometown of Linfield, Ohio, and immediately butt heads as first impressions relay obvious differences in their personalities. But as they travel home together, their initial dislike of one another leads to the unraveling of an understanding deeper than anything they had considered possible, and they develop a budding friendship over secrets shared in a dark motel room. A separation between them in the present day is informed by memories of past summer vacations they have taken together over the course of 10 years, and as they rekindle their friendship in the present , their relationship in the past slowly graduates from something simple to something deeper. 

The crash of sun-dappled waves sounds as Poppy, an optimistic, bubbly travel writer, lounges on a picturesque beach, alone. She narrates a perfect vacation, one that perfectly contradicts the pitiful experience she’s having onscreen, as her attempts to enjoy herself on this beach vacation are foiled by awkward attempts to connect with other vacationers and enjoy a solo-traveling experience. What appears to be a peaceful getaway turns out to be a series of forced merriment as isolation eats away at her, her loneliness seeping into frame and eating away at the enjoyment she could be having. Her frustration bubbles to the surface, as narration turns to furious keyboard smashing as she drafts an article detailing this excursion. “Don’t you ever find vacation a little… lonely?” she asks her boss. She sits at her desk, her attempts to craft a compelling travel-article being hindered. Being hindered by something. Or, as we later come to find out, by someone. Through a series of flashbacks of summers’ past, this “someone” is revealed to be Alex, her stoic, somewhat high-strung, travel companion and close friend, who she now is no longer on speaking terms with after a mysterious falling out. But when she receives a call from his brother, inviting her to his wedding, and reveals that Alex and his long-term girlfriend Sarah are broken up, the chance to see Alex again is too tempting to refuse. 

Through a series of flash-backs intermingled with snippets of present day, the contextualization of Poppy and Alex’s relationship occurs gradually throughout their years of shared week-long summer vacations. The tone of their first meeting carefully mirrors their awkwardness with one another in the present, and a disastrous ‘strangers-taking-a-road-trip together’ to their home in Linfield ensues. Alex’s frustration with Poppy is immediate, and her attempts to crack his hard, angry exterior are unsuccessful. It’s here when she poses a question. One that the pair continues to find the answer to as they travel the world together. She asks him, “If you could be anywhere in the world, right now, where would you be?” His response, that he wants to be home, baffles Poppy, and she tells him she wants to be anywhere but Linfield, to explore and travel and never stop moving around. They butt heads immediately, his ideas of home being very different from hers. Everything Poppy does is so viscerally annoying to Alex, from dancing to “Forever Your Girl” by Paula Abdul, to messily eating a burrito that explodes after a near car accident, and especially after she locks the keys in the car. But after a late-night conversation in a motel room that night, in which Poppy reveals the reason she’s always tried to escape home, they begin to understand one another a little. The next day, over a diner breakfast in a town they couldn’t name, they decide to be friends. 

The palpable sense of fun in this movie lies in the vacations of summers past that the pair takes. We get glimpses of their first vacation together, which occurs the summer after their first meeting, and is preluded with a delightful scene in which Alan Ruck and Molly Shannon cameo as Poppy’s overwhelmingly laid-back parents who overload the pair with encouragements of them getting together and armfuls of condoms and beta-blockers. Poppy supports Alex on his first-ever plane ride, and they travel to a picturesque forest where they hike and camp and buy a 50 pound wood-carving Poppy simply had to have. They encounter other potential love-interests, but the pair of “platonic travel companions” ultimately ends up spending the night together, in their tent, falling asleep while confessing secrets. They agree to meet up every summer, no matter where they are or what they’re doing, to take a vacation together. 

Flashing from this to their reunion in the present, Alex gives Poppy a ride from the Barcelona airport to her AirBnb. Poppy’s disappointment in not knowing Alex anymore is palpable, and though he doesn’t verbalize it, Alex lingers around Poppy, trying to get close to her again within her stiflingly hot Airbnb with no ventilation (the perfect pressure cooker for the tension boiling between them). A wall divides them in the present, and at this moment, a flash back to their summer trip in New Orleans reveals the exact opposite as the walls between them seem to be completely overcome in the past. A closeness has developed between them, in this past timeline, and after a day of letting loose and having nothing but fun, Poppy verbalizes her fear to Alex that she’s worried she’s going to die alone. “How about we die alone, together,” he responds. Something happens at this moment. But the moment is disrupted by the arrival of Poppy’s then-boyfriend, and Alex turns in for the night. But a lingering look from Poppy tells us all we need to know. They’ve fallen for one another. 

In the present, Alex attempts to fix the broken AC unit in her lodgings, and after (literally) nearly breaking his back to help her, she convinces him to stay for the night. As the ice between them thaws in the past, their relationship in the present slowly devolves into one of familiarity, as they acknowledge, but refuse to discuss, the tumultuous event that caused their separation. A vacation that they almost took to Norway mirrors their present situation, as Alex nurses a sick Poppy back to health instead of taking their planned vacation alone. It’s here where she verbalizes something that seems to pulsate through the whole movie. She tells him, “I don’t deserve you,” uttering the phrase that culminates all her fears and worries about losing him. He responds, “I know,” telling her he loves her in a phrase that seems simple, yet carries so much weight. 

The next day, Alex and Poppy attend his brother’s rehearsal dinner. She shows up late, of course, glowing and beautiful, and he can’t help but look at her with that “I love you” stare. It’s wonderful. This is what rom-coms are for! This moment! They begin to become more recognizable as their past selves, as their chemistry and love for one another attempts to let itself show. However, after David accidentally lets slip that Poppy cancelled a work trip to be at the wedding, Alex knows, for the first time, the true reason why she’s there. Not for convenience’s sake, but because of him. And when he confronts her about it, his disbelief causes him to walk away from her, leaving her thinking they can never repair the friendship they’ve lost.

It’s now that we see it, the root of their falling-out. An optimistic yet unpleasant couples trip taken by Poppy and Alex with their respective partners, creates a rift that begins to deepen as Poppy and Alex become less sure of what they are to one another. A conversation over dinner, in which Poppy’s boyfriend brags about their lavish, jet-setting lifestyle, ends with Poppy walking out, as Alex disagrees with the significance of wanderlust. “That’s what makes these trips special, right, you get to come home,” says Alex, delivering a blow that echoes the trajectory of Poppy’s arc, but hurts her in this moment, as vacations are all she’s ever known with him. But after running back to him, and allowing him to comfort her during a mid-vacation crisis, Poppy does something extraordinarily wrong. She tries to kiss him. But that’s not the problem. It’s the words she says after. “I didn’t mean it,” she repeats. Each repetition of this callous phrase drives a wedge between them, dismissing what they have as something frivolous, hurting Alex, who begs her to answer him when he asks what he is to her. Yet, she can’t respond with anything other than “a friend.” He proposes to Sarah the next day, and as the light dims on Poppy, she tries to voice her concerns to Alex about him throwing away everything he wants. But he doesn’t listen. He tells her that this is their last trip together, leaving Poppy alone and distraught, and we are whirled back into the present moment, to their current vacation that was never supposed to happen. 

Pressure continues to build between them, boiling in the heat of Poppy’s Airbnb as they attempt to understand one another through their frustration at being away from one another. Unable to bear Alex’s confession that he broke up with Sarah because of her, Poppy rips open the plastic construction sheeting blocking her path to fresh air and stands in the rain. Alex goes to her. Now, here’s a single moment that makes this rom-com what it is. As they stand in the rain together, Alex confesses his feelings towards her. And Poppy does the same. But his distrust of her throughout this film has been a constant, and it certainly does not let up now. He asks her how long she’s felt the way she’s felt, and we get the absolute stunner, instant-classic maker of a line – “probably always”– followed by a kiss in the rain. Now, of course a #3rdactbreakup ensues as Poppy’s fears cloud her commitment to a future with him, but after an interaction with his ex-girlfriend in an airport, Poppy resigns from her job with an article, delivering a sentiment that has taken her 120 minutes to realize: that “most people need a vacation from their life, but that was never my problem…I need the life part.”

Poppy returns to Linfield, Ohio to find Alex. He unknowingly runs from her, wearing the absolute best noise cancelling headphones of all time, apparently. “I hate running,” she reiterates for the thousandth time, before breaking out into a run and chasing him. She runs and runs. Oh, and then she keeps running. For, like, an eternity. She finally catches him. “Wherever you are in the world, that’s where I belong,” she tells him. “You’re not a vacation to me. You’re home,” delivering the sentiment of the movie in the middle of an intersection.

While this film is about vacation, and escaping reality for brief moments of shared adventure, it’s ultimately about the return. It’s about the grounding process of finding that one person, or that one place, where you can feel safe. Where it isn’t about thrill-seeking or experiencing something new just for the hell of it, or finding yourself in a world you don’t know. People We Meet On Vacation is about finding  home. While it’s pretty hard to disregard this sentiment (as it’s reiterated aloud plenty of times) its simplicity makes it all the more special. An un-complicated, stripped-down plot, with a single narrative flow, centered on the development of the relationship between two characters is exactly the kind of rom-com I, personally, have been searching for. 

This adaptation of People We Meet on Vacation is stripped down to the studs, and simply bursts with joyfulness. In the final few minutes of the movie, Poppy runs towards Alex, clinging to a path that leads to their future together. They do the confession thing, and we breathe a collective, lovesick sigh as their story is bookmarked by a quiet, domestic epilogue of their actualized life together. Whether the magnetism of this movie lies in the palpable chemistry between Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, or the allure of picturesque voyages away, there’s something about this movie that truly does feel special. Feeling connected to something familiar shouldn’t be cliche, it should be enjoyed, freely and enthusiastically. Isn’t that what makes a rom-com worth it? The unabashed relief of love? It’s movies like these that we need, that we seek out. Movies that let us exist in simple, unaffected comfort, and make us ache for a feeling like that of returning home.

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