An Inauspicious Beginning to the Emily Henry Cinematic Universe

I have read a couple of Emily Henry novels, but without referring to Goodreads, I probably could not tell you which ones. That is not a knock against Henry, and it is not as though the characters in her novels are interchangeable. But the themes are, more or less, and so are the book covers, and the titles are remarkably unremarkable. Her novels lean into the same tropes that dominate rom-coms, but they are well written, emotionally insightful, and often genuinely touching. They are very good beach reads.

They are also extremely popular, and that popularity is now making its way to screens, both big and small. Netflix released the first adaptation of an Emily Henry novel last week, People We Meet on Vacation, and her other four adult novels are in various stages of development as films, most of which will likely land on Netflix. They are perfectly tailored to the streamer, although I dare anyone who has read all five to match their unremarkable titles to their respective rom-com tropes:

Title
Beach Read
People We Meet on Vacation
Book Lovers
Happy Place
Funny Story

Trope
Friends to Lovers
Enemies to Lovers
Rivals to Lovers
Fake Relationship
Second-Chance Relationship (through fakery)

I assumed I had read People We Meet on Vacation until I saw the trailer, and even after that, I was only about 70 percent sure that I had not. Again, this is not a knock against the novels, although, at least in the case of People We Meet on Vacation, once it is flattened out and stripped of Emily Henry’s emotional insights, it becomes a fairly generic romantic comedy.

There is nothing here we have not seen a dozen times before, and while the leads, Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, are likable — think an algorithm’s idea of Rachel Bloom and Dylan Minette, only even more Netflix-y — there is not much heat in their chemistry. This is the “friends to lovers” novel, and while the two convincingly handle the friends part, the movie feels stuck in that friend zone even after they make the leap to lovers.

People We Meet on Vacation cuts back and forth between the present, a wedding that both Poppy (Bader) and Alex (Blyth) are attending, and flashbacks to their various vacations. The two first meet when Poppy gets a ride with Alex from their small Ohio town to Boston College, where they are both set to enroll. The car trip gets off to a rocky start because they are total opposites, but they eventually bond over a series of small disasters.

They later agree to take annual vacations together, during which Alex gets to act like his “vacation self,” meaning he cuts loose. In his regular life, he is a homebody with a long-term girlfriend who always returns to Ohio. Poppy, by contrast, is an adventurous travel writer who is terrified of settling down.

Anyone who has ever seen a movie knows exactly where People We Meet on Vacation is headed. The two grow closer over the years, one of them admits romantic feelings, they have a falling out, and they reconcile at the present-day wedding.

It is not a bad movie, but it is not a good one, either. Molly Shannon and Alan Ruck enliven the proceedings as Poppy’s parents. Miles Heizer and Lukas Gage steal a scene or two, and Jameela Jamil shows up, which mostly invites the question of how anyone fell so far from their Good Place heights. It is all very Netflix-y, which is to say that once the rest of Henry’s novels are turned into streaming movies, no one will remember which was which. Still, it is an easy enough way to pass two hours, and that may be exactly what it is designed to be.