There and Back Again: PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION

It’s about time we had a new Brett Haley movie. He makes warm, gentle, and observant little dramas that are broadly appealing and specifically drawn, small in scope and big in heart. They’re directed with a light touch and earnest feeling, and about ordinary people. Of course that means what used to be modest theatrical releases (like Sam Elliot in an aging actor story The Hero or Nick Offerman as a dad bonding with a daughter through music in Hearts Beat Loud) are now no longer in theaters first. His last couple, which might've gotten a little lost in the early days of the pandemic, went straight to Netflix. This one’s People We Meet on Vacation, a Sony release that nonetheless has debuted there, too. (Did they learn nothing from KPop Demon Hunters?) It’s based on a bestselling novel from Emily Henry, and as far as modern popular novelists getting adapted to the screen go, I’ll take more of these over Colleen Hoover’s any day. This particular story is cribbed a little from Devil Wears Prada and a lot from When Harry Met Sally. It stars Emily Bader as a cute writer for a travel magazine. Ah, it’s almost romantic enough to remember when that was reliable job. To please her boss, she agrees to turn a trip to a friend’s destination wedding in Barcelona into an article. Her only concern is that she’ll meet a longtime friend from college there. And she’s totally not into him. Except she is. 

He (Tom Blyth) met her when they were matched by happenstance to carpool from campus to their shared hometown, and ever since they have been will-they-won’t-they best friends. (Harry, meet Sally.) The movie proceeds through her present day flutters about meeting back up with this obvious romantic interest while flashing back to a variety of vacations they took together as pals. Haley’s usual light touch is well-suited to these glossy throwback moves, from flirty banter in gorgeous locations to gentle wackiness about miscommunications or misplaced outfits. He lets the actors’ chemistry simmer at a low boil, surrounds them with a few ace comic ringers (like Molly Shannon and Alan Ruck), and gets his usual collaborators—from the glossy cinematography from Rob C. Givens to the low-key score from Keegan Dewitt—keeping the events low-key pleasant and lively. We know where this is going. Anyone who’s seen a romantic comedy can. But the charm with these sort of things is not always in the novelty, but in seeing the old tropes dressed up with new attractive packaging. This isn’t great, offering more smiles than investment, let alone laughter, but it’s a crowd-pleaser of a sort. And it’s good to see Haley back. There’s an easy, relaxed tone (even when drama gets heavy) and honest open-heartedness (even in the more predictable turns) that make his movies feel so comforting to experience. Perhaps it’ll inspire people to visit, or revisit, his earlier, better movies, too.