“You are my friend, my best
friend! I don’t want to ruin that.”
Built on a rather cliched storyline,
“Can two people be just friends? If yes, then for how long?” - Emily Henry, best
known for her romance novels, brings to you ‘People We Meet on Vacation’! The Berkley Books publishing has recently been
shelved on Netflix among all the other eye-catching and worth drooling romances.
I had never really boarded the Emily Henry
book wagon until it was announced on Netflix.
Not a Henrietta yet, but a book-to-screen adaptation has always been my
favourite category. I am not the one to judge whether the adaptation has fared
well against the best-selling novel. But stick with me for the movie review.
Tom Blyth and Emily Bader, cast in
the roles of Alex and Poppy, churn the already milked plotline, but they have
something refreshing to add. Vacations! Yes. The superb cast follows their life in and out
of Linfield, Ohio. A small town, perhaps, where most of us spend our entire childhood
before leaving for college. But Alex wants to stay rooted, unlike Poppy, who never
wants to return to Linfield. Alex has a plan, but Poppy doesn’t and doesn’t want
to have one.
Stumbling upon the movie first, I
found Alex and Poppy no different than some of our beloved Bollywood pairings. The
closest they came to was Geet and Aditya in Jab We Met. Alex and Poppy
are poles apart, but like Aditya, Alex too is pulled into Poppy’s life after
that painful car ride. They decide to ‘wing
it’ every summer for a week, where vacation Alex is different from real-life
Alex without an itinerary. They are friends. They know it. It’s all platonic. But
Tuscany changes everything. The loud Poppy and an even louder fashionista start
to wilt, and Alex settles for Sarah. Thereafter, vacations every summer come to a
halt! They met after two years at Alex’s brother’s wedding in Barcelona.
The non-linear narrative shifts
back and forth in time. The movie opens
with Poppy, a travel writer, imagining herself in her writing. On a solo vacation
at the beach, she is catching up with the vibe, but a bird poops. Later, she is shown
returning to her room alone, leaving a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign at the gate. While
under a shower, she slips on the bathroom floor, fearing her body will be left
to decompose, only to be found by a cleaning lady. Poppy is awakened by an “Ugh!”
from the Editor of R+R, who happened to read that on her screen in
the New York office. Poppy is struggling to write a blog. Entirely flummoxed
and slumped, a promising writer has nothing new or exciting to offer. Poppy doesn’t
need to look any further. She knows vacations aren’t the same without Alex in
them. She sets out to remedy her friendship-turned-relationship with Alex while
resolving to work on her own issues of running away.
Waves, water and seagulls! You are on vacation and ‘you can be anyone you want!’ Can you imagine if you don’t have your best friend by your side?