People We Meet On Vacation
Directed by Brett Haley
★★★★
Judy Greer and Marc Menchaca in Dead of Winter. Courtesy of Vertical Entertainment.
I read Emily Henry’s novel when it came out and loved it immediately. It does something that very few romance novels manage — it makes you feel the slow erosion of denial, the kind that settles in when two people spend enough time together that pretending becomes more work than telling the truth. Adapting that onto a screen is a genuinely difficult ask, because so much of what Henry does lives in interiority, in the quiet gap between what characters say and what they mean. Director Brett Haley doesn’t always bridge that gap perfectly, but he bridges it enough, and what lands here lands beautifully.
Emily Bader is a revelation as Poppy. She’s luminous without being effortless, which is exactly right for the character. Poppy isn’t someone gliding through life on charm — she’s working for it, performing a version of herself she’s not totally sure she believes anymore, and Bader traces that internal fracture with a warmth and precision that keeps you fully invested. She never pushes too hard. The vulnerability seeps through rather than floods, and that restraint is what makes the bigger emotional moments actually hit.
Tom Blyth, as Alex, is doing something quieter but equally impressive. He’s playing a man whose entire personality is a form of self-protection — someone who loves deeply and says nothing, who watches and waits and builds walls out of good manners. Blyth gives Alex a stillness that could easily read as flatness in less capable hands, but there’s so much underneath it. You can see him working through every scene, choosing his words the way Alex chooses everything: carefully, at a cost. The chemistry between him and Bader isn’t the explosive, sparring kind — it’s the accumulated kind, the kind that only makes sense if you’ve known someone long enough to stop seeing them clearly. That’s a hard thing to manufacture and they pull it off.
And then there’s Lukas Gage, who does what Lukas Gage always does: walks into a scene, owns it completely, and makes you wish the movie was partially about him. He’s funny and light and effortlessly watchable, and every moment he’s on screen the film seems to breathe a little easier. He’s become one of the most reliably enjoyable presences in contemporary film and this is no exception.
Haley’s direction earns its place. The film looks genuinely gorgeous — Tuscany, New Orleans, Barcelona, the Canadian wilderness, all rendered with an eye for natural light and lived-in texture that avoids the glossy postcard trap. The locations feel like actual places people travel to rather than backdrops, and that geographic specificity grounds what could otherwise drift into pure fantasy. The script, by Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo, is solid and self-aware without winking at the audience. It earns its emotional beats rather than demanding them.
People We Meet On Vacation is a great new-age romcom — the kind that trusts its audience to sit with complicated feelings and wait for the payoff. Book readers will notice what’s missing. Everyone else will fall in love with what’s there.
