ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The first big romantic comedy of 2026 has arrived. “People We Meet on Vacation,” adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by Emily Henry and starring Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, will begin streaming on Netflix on Friday, Jan. 9.

“PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION” (2026, 113 min., directed by Brett Haley)

I hate having jet lag. There is nothing worse than ending – or, heaven forbid, starting – a vacation feeling like a mushy, sleepy shell of a person. As it turns out, speeding through the sky without adequate time to process the change is a recipe for incoherence, exhaustion and irritability. I’ve been there.

So, trust me when I say that “People We Meet on Vacation,” Brett Haley’s friends-to-lovers flick about two frequent vacationers, has jet leg.

Haley’s film stars Emily Bader as a woman named Poppy Wright, a magazine travel writer. At the beginning of the film, Poppy has been in a writing slump following an estrangement from Alex Nilsen, her longtime best friend, played by Tom Blyth. However, she is spurred back to action after receiving a wedding invitation from Alex’s younger brother, who has planned his destination nuptials in Barcelona, Spain. Poppy decides to take the trip as an opportunity to reconnect with Alex, with whom she used to embark on a jet-setting vacation every summer.

The movie is subsequently told in a series of flashbacks, recounting Alex and Poppy’s vacationing adventures while allotting brief respites to the present to inch the plot forward.

The problems with “People We Meet on Vacation” are largely to do with that structural decision. Although it mimics the construction of Henry’s book, the constraints of a two hour movie are far more stringent than a 400 page novel, resulting in a strangely imbalanced screenplay from Yulin Kuang, Nunzio Randazzo and Amos Vernon.

While it’s fun to visit Canada, New Orleans and Italy with Alex and Poppy, the film spends so much time luxuriating in their vacations it seems to forgets about the real life of the characters. The present day timeline and the conflict between the pair, ostensibly the narrative thrust of the film, is incredibly undercooked, like a bad in-flight meal.

Bader and Blyth aren’t at fault for the screenplay, but their performances are equally lacking in subtlety.

Bader’s Poppy may as well be the living embodiment of “quirky,” since the actress plays her character fast-talking, bubbly and expressive to a fault. Hardly a scene goes by where Poppy doesn’t commit at least one grievous faux pas, and as follows, there are few scenes in the film where Bader is acting like a human being.

Blyth, meanwhile, interpreted the stoicism of his character as an order to act like a brick wall. Blyth can be an incredibly charismatic performer, but Alex, for all of Poppy’s efforts to bring him out of his shell, is hollow in Blyth’s hands.

The empty qualities of Haley’s movie become especially apparent in comparison with its influences. The meet-cute portion of “People We Meet on Vacation” is an overt reference to “When Harry Met Sally…,” where Poppy and Alex set off together on a roadtrip much like Harry and Sally piled in the car on their way to New York City. What makes “When Harry Met Sally…” such an enduring cultural force, however, is the realism of its characters. Harry and Sally, much like Poppy and Alex, are friends for years before sparking a romance and every scene they share feels like eavesdropping on actual best friends. In contrast, Poppy and Alex, unlike Harry and Sally, are sallied with a preposterously thin script, and every scene they share requiring actual emotion feels false and contrived.

In other words, Poppy and Alex are concocted poppycock people.

“People We Meet on Vacation” isn’t all bad. There are moments of charm and a couple of good jokes. Bader and Blyth may not be winning any Oscars for their performances, but they do have chemistry in a few steamy scenes. Also, at one point, Alan Ruck – of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” fame – appears to deliver the funniest two minutes in the movie. He almost manages to make the other two hours worth it.

That’s the thing about jet lag. It’s not the journey: it’s the destination. There are fun parts of “People We Meet on Vacation,” but the movie flies through character development, emotional stakes and its convoluted story so quickly, you’ll get whiplash. Here’s hoping Blyth, Bader and Haley can sleep this one off.

Rating: 2.5/5