People We Meet on Vacation

Directed by Brett Haley, People We Meet on Vacation charts the ups and downs of a friendship between Emily Bader’s globetrotting Poppy and Tom Blyth’s down-to-earth Alex. Filmmaker Haley, armed with Yulin Kuang, Amos Vernon, and Nunzio Randazzo’s screenplay, delivers a mostly affable romcom that receives plenty of mileage out of Bader and Blyth’s terrific, charismatic efforts, and it’s clear, certainly, that the palpable chemistry between the two performers goes a long way towards smoothing over the picture’s bumps and lulls. There’s little doubt, too, that People We Meet on Vacation benefits from its assortment of familiar yet agreeable beats and digressions (eg Alex’s skinny-dipping excursion goes awry, Poppy’s mother offers her a box of condoms, etc), and while the picture builds towards a satisfying conclusion, the padded-out running time, coupled with an entirely needless, last-minute fake breakup, ensures that the whole thing runs out of steam within its second half to a distressingly palpable degree – with the end result a decent romantic comedy that could (and should) have been seriously streamlined.

**1/2 out of ****