People We Meet on Vacation (2026) Review

Poppy and Alex are good friends who have been through a lot over the years and using vacations to spend time together and explore new places, but we see everything has unraveled in recent years. Can it be fixed?

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The friendship between Poppy and Alex begins when they travel from the Boston University back home to Linfield, Ohio. I mean hello big shout out and link to When Harry Met Sally! So I was instantly curious with that start to the friendship and story!

We get to see that quite frankly they did not get along with each other to begin with, due to them just being total opposites with everything and wanting different things from life. Poppy wanted to explore the world and get away from everything that ever put her down, bullying when younger at school meant she really did not see herself returning to the small town in Ohio for the rest of her life. Whereas Alex still would see that as his home and where he wants to be, starting and family and being happy.

Throughout the film we get to see the story of the pair over a decade and that they had decided to see each other for a week each year for a vacation to somewhere different and explore it, living a different to life to the norm. Poppy had managed to make this travel her passion and her job was travelling and then reviewing hotels and areas. I mean that does sound like a pretty good job doesn’t it!

We see them in different countries, through different stages and relationships and that a friendship really can be key to keeping you going. I felt as though this was one of the best romantic comedies that I have seen in years, yes it pretty much follows the formula but it has some interesting moments and ideas at its core and mixed in with the story.

I took from the film that as you get older what you want can slightly change, not completely but you grow and what you need in your 20s isn’t what you then want in your 30s and this captured that perfectly. Another aspect is that about timing, and how that is quite frankly everything! In some relationships you might never actually time it right, and that could be ok for both people but when that timing syncs is what we all really hope for isn’t it?

I have to admit that one of the final scenes really had me filling up when she was thinking that she was too much to handle and I just felt that so hard, it was very open and quite brutal in someways. I loved his obsession with running as well, being a runner myself I thought that added in some nice moments.

Emily Bader and Tom Blyth worked so well together which naturally was an essential part of how this film works so well. I was impressed with them both, it’s never easy to move through a timeline with a character and I thought that growth was really down to the performances. Maybe we should go back to the 90s and 00s rom com’s and see them have a couple more films together!