People We Meet on Vacation: A Resurrection of Old-School Rom-Coms?
Image Credit: via cntraveller.com
When I saw the TikTok ads for People We Meet on Vacation, I wasn’t immediately enthralled. Netflix appeared to have returned to its familiar formula: book adaptation, attractive but apathetic leads, and the obligatory enemies-to-lovers arc (Sophia Carson’s recent filmography comes to mind). I even braced myself for Netflix’s typically soporific lighting. Instead, what caught my eye in a fleeting TikTok advert was sand rendered in honeyed tones, an iridescent ocean backdrop, and Poppy and Alex wandering blissfully through a shared summer escape. It scarcely felt like Netflix at all, more like an artefact from the 2000s rom-coms of my childhood.
An adaptation of Emily Henry’s bestselling novel, People We Meet on Vacation has been described by Variety as a “When Harry Met Sally-inspired romantic comedy,” following the trials and tribulations of on-again, off-again travel companions Poppy and Alex. The parallels to Ephron’s classic are indisputable. Poppy echoes Harry’s adventurous streak, whereas Alex channels Sally’s insistence on routine. Poppy and Alex even match Harry and Sally’s 12-year long slow burn, and the tension burning through the hot summer trips they take together is undeniable. A memorable dance scene to Paula Abdul’s ‘Forever Your Girl’ and a rain-soaked love confession all pay tribute to the genre’s most recognisable clichés that feel less antiquated than quietly yearned for.
It’s not hard to see why. Over the past decade, Gen Z in particular has expressed nostalgia for the Golden Age of Rom-Coms, from Pretty Woman to 10 Things I Hate About You and Notting Hill. These films offered a reliable alchemy of escapism, humour, and the comforting inevitability of a Happily Ever After. Yet as studios and critics began deriding that predictability, Hollywood shifted towards tentpole sci-fi franchises and ever-proliferating cinematic universes. As Vox noted in 2018, by the mid-2010s the rom-com had been relegated to a “nostalgic artefact.”
Still, the cultural craving never fully evaporated.
A recent Harper’s Bazaar article frequently calls for the return of the “soft romantic hero”, a figure The Atlantic argued was the genre’s secret infrastructure: a fantasy of a man who waits, listens, and pines, exercising soft power rather than brute force. In People We Meet on Vacation, Alex is dependable, emotionally literate, risk-averse, and quietly besotted: the quintessential yearner. With the film achieving 17.2 million global streams in its first weekend and a 76% Rotten Tomatoes score, it seems that appetite for the “male yearner” never disappeared; Hollywood merely stopped feeding it.
Still, whether this constitutes a true rom-com renaissance is debatable. The Guardian called the film an “uninspired take on the genre,” suggesting it leans more on familiar conventions than forging a new blueprint for a contemporary rom-coms revival. Perhaps the more interesting takeaway is cultural rather than commercial. If Gen Z has become the demographic most committed to yearning, then People We Meet on Vacation may not resurrect the rom-com so much as reframe it. For now, the genre is breathing again, and audiences are paying attention.