People We Meet On Vacation Review: This Gen Z When Harry Met Sally Pales Next To The Original

A man and a woman awkwardly meet for the first time as they embark on a road trip from their college; she's an optimist who loves the small joys in life, while he just loves complaining for the sake of complaining. The drive is insufferable, but both agree that they'd never make a good couple — not that this was on the table anyway. Unexpectedly, these polar opposites do gradually begin to bond, and their unlikely friendship — and future relationships — are jeopardized by a romantic attraction both are too stubborn to outright admit is there. Does this sound familiar?

This is, of course, the plot to "When Harry Met Sally," Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron's romantic comedy masterpiece that's managed to stand the test of time despite being structured around the long-disproven conceit that men and women can't be just friends. And as many reviews will have told you as it made its ascent to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, it's a structure unashamedly lifted by author Emily Henry for her 2021 novel "People We Meet on Vacation," because hey, if you want to make a crack at writing the great modern romance, why not just lift from one of the most timeless?

Five years later, the Netflix-produced film adaptation has arrived, and what played like loving homage on the page is something far easier to be cynical about on the screen, where the looming parallels with Reiner and Ephron's superior film can't be so easily shrugged off as a tribute. Now, it just looks like a Gen Z-friendly update with less of the laughs and unexpected warmth of the original prickly pairing, forever destined to live in the shadow of a movie that you should probably be streaming instead of this.

With all that being said: a shameless copy of "When Harry Met Sally" can't help but carry over some of the charm of its inescapable influence, even if it does attempt to be trendy and oddly aspirational in a way that will initially seem alien to anybody who has seen that movie. Opening in the present day, Poppy Wright (Emily Bader) is a jaded travel writer who has grown disenfranchised by her dream job; every single lifestyle article she now authors ends with her imagining every possible scenario in which the dream vacation could go wrong. She's become a recluse too, despite her role, and an invite to a destination wedding in Barcelona only makes things worse, as it forces her to reckon with her friendship with Alex (Tom Blyth), which had turned sour a few years earlier.

Flashing back across the years, starting with that unexpected car share, we discover how these two completely different souls became close friends, only to break apart when the romantic elephant in the room proved too large to ignore. As you can guess from the title, their friendship was forged largely through taking vacations together every summer, which is where the movie begins to feel as if a warm, approachable romcom has been forced through the screen of an Instagram influencer. Yes, this structure allows for plenty of hijinks as the socially awkward Alex embraces his carefree side when abroad, but when the story aims to deviate from looking like a holiday brochure, each trip feels like it was shot in collaboration with the tourist board of each country. Even in the year when illness causes them to cancel last minute, the screenplay by Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo ensures the dialogue takes time to stress the location they're missing out on; a hotel made entirely out of ice in Norway. With that destination recently appearing in a flashback on "Pluribus" (check out Looper's review for the series here) too, I can't help but feel that the hotel's PR team has been working overtime in the past few months.

As for the romance itself, Emily Bader and Tom Blyth have a sweet opposites attract chemistry that helps ground a story with far more air miles than the average viewer will have. However, having not read the book, I can assume that the biggest problem in translation is that their relationships with the extensive supporting cast of their friends and family — the wedding Poppy is invited to is that of Alex's brother — don't feel anywhere near as organic. Poppy's relationship with Alex's gay sibling is dramatized entirely through exposition, all but absent from the flashbacks that reveal why she's been invited in the first place, stressing an important friendship that we've not had the chance to see blossom for ourselves. The same goes for her relationship with his entire family, which he seems like the black sheep of, and that is stressed to us repeatedly without actually being shown. Fundamentally, there would be no difference if she was meeting them for the first time at the wedding — it felt more akin to drunkenly meeting someone in a nightclub smoking area and declaring them to be your best friend after five minutes. There is an equal amount of depth to these relationships the movie wants us to believe have left a major impression.

And yet, it's still not hard to get caught up in the sugary sweetness of it all; the kind of film it's easy to criticize, yet every complaint is countered by its sheer charm. Which is saying something, considering both characters are introduced at their most annoying — Alex too miserable and withdrawn, Poppy too overbearingly happy and excitable about every small thing. It's to the credit of the performers and director Brett Haley that this coupling genuinely feels improbable, initially appearing to counter the cliché that they'll inevitably get together, much like how the original draft of "When Harry Met Sally" ended. That's why it's so easy to get swept up along with the characters when something does manage to develop out of a simmering mutual resentment.

So yes, Gen Z absolutely deserves better than "People We Meet on Vacation" as their equivalent to "When Harry Met Sally" — but until a worthy successor comes along, this will make for a charming substitute.

"People We Meet on Vacation" starts streaming on Netflix on January 9.