People We Meet on Vacation

I, like most twenty somethings who love romance novels, have been counting down to the release of the People We Meet on Vacation movie that dropped on Netflix this past Friday.

People We Meet On Vacation follows Poppy and Alex, two best friends who vacation together every summer. Unfortunately, something happens on one of their summer trips, and they not only stop vacationing together, but they stop talking all together. Now, Poppy’s trying to fix whatever it was that went so wrong. 

This is arguably Emily Henry’s most slept on novel, and for me, it’s pretty high up there on my ranking of Emily Henry’s books. 

I could be a little bit biased because let’s face it, I love traveling. There’s very little I like more than hopping on a plane and trotting across a new part of the globe, so a story about traveling really speaks to me (iykyk). But beyond that, I think this novel in particular shows just how incredible a writer Emily Henry is.

A couple of my favorites things in this novel are when Poppy says she rarely notices how different she and Alex are in size because he so often brings himself down to her level or pulls her up to his (Chapter 15). I’m short, but I’ve never really thought of this before, and this line made stop and give a nod to Emily because props to her for this one. I also love when Poppy describes love as being imprinted on her palms , something that’s burned and scorched as proof it was once there (Chapter 23) and I remember everything (Chapter 31, I’m a SUCKER for an “I Remember Everything”, thank you very much, Pacey Witter). And in general, I loved the exploration of what vacation means and appreciating the places you travel and the person that you are in those places and the person you are when you’re with someone else and in love.

I think Emily Henry has a super power in that she’s able to really take a look at the human experience, leave you feeling open and raw and vulnerable, but still give you a love story at the same time. Her books don’t stick with you just because of their characters, but also because of how they make you feel.

I had my popcorn ready and Netflix open on my TV on Friday night, eagerly waiting to press play on the movie, and I tried to remind myself beforehand that I needed to make sure I was looking at these two pieces of art as two separate projects. 

I love this novel, and quite honestly, I think I did myself a bit of a disservice by rereading it the day before the movie came out because I could remember all the little tiny details that I wanted to make it into the film and I was genuinely opening myself up to be disappointed because it’s simply not possible to include everything from a book in its movie. 

I literally took a class on this in college – not everything can translate from page to screen! It’s impossible! And yet, I knew I was going to miss certain things from the pages of the book.

So let me start by saying this – I think this movie is tremendous. I think the writers did an incredible job crafting this film (shoutout to Yulin Kuang, you’re amazing!) and I think Emily Bader and Tom Blyth absolutely killed these roles. Emily is so Poppy it hurts and Tom is so charismatic and brings Alex to life like no other actor could. 

Truly, I think this casting was perfect. I think Emily and Tom have such great chemistry. Watching them laugh together, poke fun at each other, yearn for each other… It was a privilege and I don’t think there are two people better suited for these roles. 

The scenes while they were camping and in New Orleans brought me such great joy and I laughed harder than I’ve laughed watching a movie in well… I don’t know. That’s how long it’s been since a movie made me smile and laugh the way this one did. And I know I said it already, but Emily seriously took on the role of Poppy so, so well. I don’t know anything about Emily Bader, I’ve never seen her in any other projects, but she was meant to play Poppy and you will never convince me otherwise.

So, objectively speaking, this movie is lovely. For a romcom lover, some might even say this movie is perfect. Really, I loved it. 

But as a reader and a lover of the book, I can’t lie and say I didn’t have my issues. No matter how hard I try to remind myself that these are separate entities!!! I do still have my qualms, and honestly, I hate that I’m playing a comparison game.

So let’s play a version of the Hot and Cold Game to try to make it a little more palatable. Some things I was like YES THIS IS PERFECT, some things were kind of lukewarm but I still appreciated because I saw the intent, and some things just made me a liiiitle frustrated and didn’t hit for me.

Here’s where it’s hot for me….

• Of course, I have to start with the Emily Henry cameo. One thing I will ALWAYS love in an adaptation is when the author makes a cameo in the project. I was grinning from ear to ear when I saw her
• I LOVED the mimicry of the cover images
  • At the beginning of the movie, you see Poppy sitting on the beach alone reading a book and I was like ‘huh, this is interesting. I’ve seen the picture of Poppy and Alex on the beach like the cover of the book so where is he?!’ and I kind of just brushed it off. BUT WHEN IT CAME BACK AROUND AT THE END and we saw the scene of Alex and Poppy reading on the beach that juxtaposed the scene of her alone on the beach earlier in the movie… GENIUS!
• I also loved the ending credits. I don’t know if this was the intent, but this is what I saw in my head and I’m sticking with it – the credits reminded me of the You and Me on Vacation cover and I thought this was another stroke of genius
• I loved the inclusion of Theme Matters
• I thought the soundtrack to this movie was perfection, minus the Taylor Swift song (yes, I know this will get me some hate. But personally, I felt like the song was out of place and it felt to me like a Summer I Turned Pretty wannabe moment and these two projects are both so special, but they are both very much their own)
• I liked how even though the apartment Poppy booked in the movie was much nicer than in the book, they still included the tarps lining the doors and windows. Ripping the tarps during the rainstorm then finally kissing Alex was so important for Poppy in the book and I’m glad a version of that made it into the movie.
• The scene in the bar in new Orleans. Where do I even begin?
  • Let’s start with the wardrobe. It. Was. Incredible. Poppy’s outfit was sheer perfection (if I could go out like that every day (and pull the outfit off as good as Emily did) I WOULD! No one would ever see my real hair again and I’d be pretending I was Donna from Donna & the Dynamos for more than One Night and One Night Only!)
  • This scene was also hilarious. I was grinning and laughing throughout this entire scene. No notes. Absolutely perfect scene.
    • Poppy’s accent, her crazy story, and the DANCE! The. Dance. I loved every moment of this.
• The scene where they’re camping and Alex comes back naked… This was actually moment #1 where I couldn’t control my laughter. I feel like this scene perfectly captured the young, YOLO energy that college students have – I remember this feeling in my BONES – and the amusement on Poppy’s face and Alex’s mortification turned amusement had be kicking my feet laughing. 
• I LOVED that Alex got Poppy to run at the end of the movie. An excellent example of SET UP AND PAY OFF! THANK YOU FILM CLASS!

Here’s where it gets warm for me…

• Keeping lines from the book, but in a different context or edited a little
  • The line “It speaks to me.” – This was big in the book and it was funny because it was a ridiculous thing someone said to Poppy and Alex and they ran with it and turned it into an inside joke. While it was funny in the movie in that Alex ended up carrying the gigantic bear sculpture after saying he wouldn’t (trust me, this got SO many laughs out of me as he struggled to carry that ridiculous piece of woodwork), the fact that it’s Poppy who ultimately said it out of the blue felt too sudden and took the comedy out of the line for me, but I understand why it’s there.
  • In New Orleans, Poppy says, “Too many alcohol”, but in the book, she says, “too many wine.”
    • I KNOW I’m being a stickler, but I love the nod to the book with this line and WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE JUST BEEN THE SAME
• The back spasm… It worked so well in the book because this is something Alex has faced before, He knows he unfortunately gets back spasms here and there and he knows how to deal with it. The spasms in the book show his stubbornness in not wanting to let someone help him heal, and also shows that he and Poppy have grown up. They’ve been going on vacation together for a decade, they’re not kids anymore. This is just another thing that exemplifies how different these two people are from the kids that became friends. I’m happy that the spasm stayed in the movie, but I don’t think the way it was framed served the story the best it could.
• Sarah
  • Sarah is interesting for me because I really don’t care about her. I’m pretty neutral on this girl (sorry, just being honest). It’s clear she and Alex don’t belong together, yet there’s something that keeps pulling them together (a little strange that in the movie they’re on again / off again, but I’ll let that part slide). Sarah is not the character I need, but she works in the story because she provides conflict in Alex and Poppy’s story. 
  • She ended up being critical to the story because of the conversation she and Poppy had at the end of the book when they spoke outside of school and she told Poppy where she might be able to find Alex. This conversation humanized her in a way Poppy’s narration hadn’t yet been able to and I liked that. So I do think that even though the film didn’t end with Poppy trying to track down Alex at school and finding Sarah instead, I do like that the two women were still able to have their final 1:1 conversation in the airport.
  • It also was interesting to me that in the film, they chose to make Sarah and Alex high school sweethearts. I’m neutral either way (I think my stance on Sarah is clear), but I did like the idea of her being separate from their home life and I’m curious why they chose to have her from Linfield. 
• I liked in the book that Alex had plans to potentially move to New York for Poppy before they began rekindling their relationship. It felt sweet and showed how much he loved her. It wasn’t imperative to the story, but I liked it and I missed it in the movie.
• I also missed Poppy pouring her heart out to Alex in front of her old teachers. Poppy worked so hard to run and run and keep running away from Linfield and for her to go back there for Alex was monumental for her character. Add that onto the fact that she was confessing everything to Alex in front of people who are from the very environment that made Poppy want to leave to begin with made her character arc feel that much bigger. I like that she still had to return to Linfield to talk to Alex in the movie, but the extra layer of doing this in a public setting around people Alex is close to would’ve added another layer to the movie.
• THEY CUT THE SCENE WHERE ALEX AND POPPY LOOK AT EACH OTHER’S TINDER PROFILES AND ADMIT THEY WOULD SWIPE ON EACH OTHER – this scene was so cute and so fun (and funny) and the all caps may suggest this point belongs in the cold category, I’m not sure. I really did miss this scene, even if it wasn’t necessarily imperative to the story.

Here’s where it gets (very) cold for me…

• I didn’t feel Poppy’s discontent with her life early enough in the story. I think it’s sort of clear she’s in a little bit of a rut at the beginning of the movie (maybe…), but I think her discontent was SO pivotal to the story and I think the movie lost a lot of depth by not showing that more until after the wedding.
  • That being said, the wedding itself didn’t work for me. Poppy planned this whole trip to Palm Springs in the book in order to mend her relationship with Alex and in the movie, it felt like luck that somehow, hers and Alex’s paths were crossing again. With Poppy being invited to the wedding, it snatched Poppy’s growth away from her. It wasn’t her own desire and maturity and sadness over missing Alex that made her mend the relationship and I think that’s a tremendous loss for the film’s arc and for Poppy’s arc.
  • I like that you do see her discontent in the movie after the wedding, but I really think you needed more of it when the movie began.
• The movie didn’t take place in Palm Springs
  • It’s not like I was particularly attached to Palm Springs as a backdrop to the story, but I do think location in general is important to the story as a whole. By not having Poppy and Alex embark on another trip together, it took away the opportunity for them to be forced into the same space and forced to come face to face with their issues, literally. (My forced proximity girlies, you get the vibe we were after here)
    • Yes, Alex ended up staying one of the nights in her condo because of the lack of AC and because of the back spasm (props to the writers for keeping these little bits) but those moments didn’t hold as much weight as they could have if Poppy and Alex were staying together and planning to stay together. 
  • I also think the conflict and the banter with the landlord Nikolai gave some comedic relief to the novel, and while it definitely wasn’t imperative to the story, it added something to it that I think was missed in the movie. You so desperately wanted Poppy and Alex to break the tension and Nikolai did that, even in the moments when Poppy and Alex couldn’t with each other.
• I WANTED (NO, NEEDED) MORE OF THEIR PNEUMONIA TRIP (aka, the cancelled Norway trip). These bits from the book were so meaningful and beautiful and yes, Alex still came to New York to take care of her in the movie, but go back and read Chapter 25 and try to tell me the movie didn’t need more.
• Their trips to Tuscany and Croatia are combined. This sounds like such a little thing, but two Very Important things happened on each trip and combining them into one RUINS both of those things (in my opinion)
• This next one is BIG FOR ME and it is the scene where Poppy thinks she could be pregnant. This is one of, if not THE most important scene in the book to me, and I can’t say the same for the movie.
  • #1– It was impossible for this scene to hold as much weight in the movie because it seems that Alex’s mom passed away while he was young, but not during childbirth.
    • This is important because having Alex’s mom pass away when he was so young in the book forced him to grow up. It forced him to be the one who always had it together. It is the reason, or one of the reasons, why Alex hates accepting help so much, and this is a big point of contention and confusion for Poppy and Alex. 
    • It also reframes the way Alex looks at pregnancy. In the movie, his friend could be pregnant with a man’s baby whom she knows she will not last longterm with and he hates that. In the book, Poppy being pregnant could mean Poppy dies. To Alex. He knows firsthand that there can be fatal complications during pregnancy.
      • He is viewing her potential pregnancy in the movie and in the book from two completely different lenses and this did not sit well with me. 
  • #2 – Tied into #1 but deserves its own bullet point, this moment held so much weight to Alex that he literally got a vasectomy after he thought Poppy could be pregnant… Think about that.
    • The way Poppy’s potential pregnancy played out in the book made Alex literally stop in his tracks, quickly revaluate his life, and act on it. He even cried in the moment, which for Alex, is very big. This is not how it felt in the movie.
  • #3 – The aftermath of the pregnancy scare.
    • Starting with Poppy kissing Alex…. Like HUUUUUH??? THEN saying she didn’t mean?! Turning into a ‘what am I to you?!’
      • Poppy, my girl, I love you. But this was bitchy, and you are not bitchy. 
  • #4 – The story devolves even more when Alex. Fucking. Proposes.
    • After you think your best friend could be pregnant, after you kiss, THEN you decide it’s time to propose to your on again / off again girlfriend? Brother, take a second to reevaluate your choices.
      • Here’s why I take particular issue with this:
        • Alex proposes on one of HIS AND POPPY’S VACATIONS. This one is different because it’s a couples trip, yes. But at its heart, it’s still a Poppy and Alex vacation and I think it’s extremely shortsighted and disrespectful to his relationship with Poppy to propose on one of their trips. It does not feel like something Alex would do. To me, proposing on a vacation feels like it goes against Alex’s entire character. 
        • I wanted Sarah to make the marriage comment while she, Alex, Poppy, and Poppy’s boyfriend were together. Because this was the moment in the book that Poppy realized ‘Oh shit, this could actually be serious.’ Instead, Poppy realizes they’re serious about each other because ALEX PROPOSED. It’s truly not a big deal that Sarah’s comment was omitted, but I liked it for the simple reason that it was a moment of realization and growth and a total gut punch for Poppy that I think she needed. And I think she needed it to come from Sarah. Alex proposing emphasizes how much of a different page she and her best friend are on, but hearing it from Sarah shows that yes, maybe they could be on different pages, or maybe, he just doesn’t want to talk about his relationship to Poppy because it doesn’t feel right to him either. If Alex proposes, it solidifies that Alex really is in a different place. If Sarah makes the comment, it still allows Poppy to hope and dream of a future with him.
    • #5 – It felt very unrealistic to me that Alex would ghost Poppy. In the book, it felt more like mutual awkwardness and miscommunication, but it feels like it goes completely against Alex’s Type-A character to simply ghost his best friend whom he clearly cares a great deal about.
• Some lines that really irked me
  • “Love has never been our problem.” – I would argue that yes, love has actually always been their problem? Granted, they had never spoken those words aloud to each other, but the reason their miscommunications began is because they love each other and they fear that if they say it, they’ll lose each other, no?
  • “As long as I’m with you, I don’t care.” – If this is true, Alex, then why couldn’t you and Poppy work it out in Spain? Why couldn’t you figure out a compromise with Poppy like you were soooo willing to do with Sarah before? (Yes, I realize Alex was settling for Sarah and it wasn’t so much a compromise as it would be settling, but it’s the principle)
  • “I think this is our last trip together.” – This felt out of the blue to me and out of character. I also think that bluntly stating that they wouldn’t be taking anymore trips together made the situation a little too black and white. It might be because we didn’t know what happened between them until late in the book, but it felt more nuanced in the novel than a conversation that explicitly states their traveling days are over.
  • “Since when? / Probably Always.” –– I don’t like Poppy’s indecision and her inability to tell Alex when she fell for him because it just reiterates to Alex how she doesn’t know what she wants. And I think Poppy’s kind of always known the loved Alex, so I don’t know why she can’t just tell him that. They aren’t in a situationship where accidentally telling the other person you have feelings is going to ruin everything; he wanted to know she cared.
  • “I was waiting for you (in Linfield).” – Alex, HUUUH? Maybe you wanted to see that Poppy could grow up, but she made it so clear that she never wanted to stay in Ohio, so why would you wait for her there? I’m all for you waiting for Poppy, but waiting in Linfield feels unrealistic.
• I missed Poppy describing Alex as Naked Alex. I know this was only said through narration (through correct me if I’m wrong), so it would be hard to include that in the movie without a voice over, but I loved it. I thought it was such a unique way to describe someone you care about and who you really see, and I wish it could’ve made it into the movie. (See chapter 5 where she describes him as Naked Alex for the first time, then continues to do so throughout chapters 7, 18, 27, 31, and the epilogue).

Lastly, some random thoughts…

• It makes me sad that the movie didn’t take place at the Desert Rose because the Out of Print t-shirt and hat are SO CUTE (I also love the vacation tote bag and t-shirt, but they’re not Desert Rose)
• I love that they have a dachshund at the end of the movie…
• This is SO random but IT CONSUMED ME WHILE I WATCHED – the piano music that was playing throughout scenes in the movie… IT SOUNDED JUST LIKE OUT OF THE BLUE BY DEBBIE GIBSON?? LIKE… WAS IT?! I could be so off base here, I have been known to cling onto little rhythms in tv shows and start singing to them, but this sounded way too close to me to NOT be Out of the Blue

So, to summarize, I guess my biggest takeaways are these: I loved the movie and I think it was fun and it if you’re looking for a romcom with old romcom vibes, then this is your movie. I think the acting was spectacular, I love the music, love the wardrobe, and I don’t think anyone could’ve played Alex and Poppy better than Tom and Emily. It made me laugh, it got me teary, and it was a fun romcom. But, I needed to feel Poppy’s unhappiness more than I did for this film to really move me. I also don’t like that Alex’s brother’s wedding was just a wedding – I liked in the book that Alex and Poppy were together to rekindle something, a friendship or more, and then they went to the wedding together. In the movie, the wedding was convenient, but in the book, the act of being together was intentional and that was missed in the movie. Their choice of being together in the book emphasized their growth, maturity, and aging in a way the movie simply wasn’t able to do.

My Overall Rating: 7 / 10