India, Jan. 10 -- Adapted from a bestselling novel by Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation arrives with the kind of built-in goodwill most romantic comedies would kill for. It is glossy, sunlit, comfortably familiar and acutely aware of the genre it inhabits. Released in the dead of winter, the film clearly wants to function as a warm-weather fantasy - a soft-focus reminder of beaches, bad decisions and better timing. What it doesn't quite manage is to turn that familiarity into feeling.

At its core, this is a romance that knows exactly where it is headed and makes little effort to pretend otherwise. The problem isn't predictability - romcoms thrive on it - but how dutifully the film goes through motions we've seen executed with far m...