Rom-coms are getting wet again. After years of irony, emotional distancing, and romance delivered with an escape hatch, the genre is rediscovering sincerity. Yes, many of us were taught that wanting too much is embarrassing, that attachment is a liability, and that independence is the ultimate marker of adulthood. In that context, slow-burn love stories feel almost radical. Which is why the film adaptation of People We Meet on Vacation arrives with so much promise.

Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation novel became a phenomenon not because it reinvented the rom-com, but because it articulated something many readers already felt and rarely saw named. Often dismissed as a breezy “beach read,” the novel is actually about emotional avoidance. It is a story about wanting someone deeply while convincing yourself that restraint is maturity.

I know that logic intimately. I know what it is like to keep a man in your life without telling him how you feel, not because you are unsure, but because you are afraid that honesty would end the quiet intimacy you have built. That kind of restraint does not feel like cowardice. It feels like care. And I suspect many people in Gen Z, and plenty of millennials too, recognize themselves in that emotional calculus.

This is where People We Meet on Vacation taps into something generational. It is not just about romance. It is about fear disguised as emotional intelligence. It is about how often we mistake silence for maturity, and how easily we convince ourselves that not asking for more is the same as being okay.

The film understands this emotionally, if not always structurally, and nowhere is that clearer than in the chemistry between the leads.

Let’s be honest: this movie works because the chemistry works. Especially Emily Bader as Poppy Wright and Tom Blyth as Alex Nilsen. Whatever the pacing issues, whatever the compression of years of longing into a tight runtime, the attraction between these two characters is undeniable. Their dynamic feels lived-in rather than performative. You believe they like each other. You believe they enjoy each other. You believe that the emotional intimacy existed long before the romantic one.

And yes, the movie absolutely had me kicking my feet and giggling.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in New Orleans, which is easily the film’s most charming and emotionally legible stretch. When Poppy and Alex pretend to be on their honeymoon, the movie briefly lets itself relax, and in doing so, reveals exactly why these two make sense together. The joke works because Alex does not hesitate. He does not correct Poppy. He does not pull back. He simply goes with it.

He matches her energy completely, committing to every detail of the story she invents, including an absurdly confident fake proposal meant to impress another honeymooning couple. At one point, he even launches into a playful, tongue-in-cheek stripper tease. He does not actually strip, but the implication alone is enough to send the moment into flirtatious overdrive. It is ridiculous. It is intimate. It is deeply telling.

This chemistry carries the film through its faster pacing. And the movie does move fast. Years of shared history, emotional buildup, and interior conflict are compressed into a rhythm that rarely pauses to sit in discomfort. The momentum makes the film highly watchable, but it also flattens some of what made the book ache.

Because in the novel, ache is the story.

Poppy and Alex do not circle each other for years because they do not understand their feelings. They do it because they understand them too well. The movie gestures toward this interior tension, but it does not stay with it for long.

Instead, it leans into recognizably romantic beats: confrontation, confession, release. It even gives us a rain-soaked kiss that aligns visually with the genre’s return to sincerity. And to be clear, the rain works. The emotion works. The kiss works.

But in the book, sincerity is not staged. It is earned.

In the novel, Poppy’s final honesty carries weight because it is grounded in sacrifice. She does not just say she loves Alex. She confronts the fear that has shaped her choices for years. The film softens that reckoning. Poppy’s realization is reframed as clarity rather than confrontation in a cleaner emotional pivot. The movie quickly answers the questions the book asks about independence, stability, and what it means to choose one life over many.

And yet, this is where the movie is still deeply pleasurable to watch.

The chemistry is real. The yearning is legible. The joy is genuine. What the film sacrifices in depth, it gains in immediacy.

Which makes People We Meet on Vacation less a failed adaptation than a revealing one. It shows us what modern rom-coms are still negotiating: how to balance emotional seriousness with accessibility, discomfort with delight, longing with momentum.

And maybe the most honest takeaway is this: sometimes you want a romance that makes you think, and sometimes you want one that mirrors the quiet truth you are already living, the person you keep close because wanting them out loud feels like too much to risk.

People We Meet on Vacation understands that impulse deeply.

It just hits two different notes depending on the medium.