This movie is essentially “When Harry Met Sally…” (1989), but aimed at millennials and not as well-written.
It really made me want to read the original book to see if my issues with the movie were there as well. For example, the first time they met, Poppy (Emily Bader) gave Alex (Tom Blyth) plenty of reasons to get upset and to lose his temper with her. I liked Poppy, I really did, but I will be the first to admit that she is annoying and incredibly inconsiderate. Like, why is she singing loudly at the airport baggage check, much less as a seasoned traveler? I genuinely can’t fathom why Alex would choose to become friends with her after his first road trip with her.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
He does her a favor by driving her back to their hometown, a drive that is at minimum 10 hours long without breaks. She responds by being an hour late, brushing off his understandable frustration and treating his car like it’s hers.
After annoying him, getting them stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and making a mess in his car comparable to the vomit scene in “The Exorcist” (1973), she gets them stranded in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. Mind you, they were already four hours late at this point. We also know they are five hours away from their destination. Using Google Maps, I was unable to find anywhere in Ohio that this hometown could be, which was more than a 14-hour drive from their starting point. Since we did not see Poppy driving, this means that Alex (Tom Blyth) had been driving anywhere from five to nine hours when they became stranded, not counting traffic. Again, these are hours in which we pretty much only see her annoying him.
They end up waiting until nightfall for someone to show up to unlock the car before renting a motel room for the night. Alex is a college student, part of a notoriously penniless demographic, who now has to pay to get his car unlocked and for his half of a motel room. We can assume that they also had to walk to the motel because the car was still locked. Instead of apologizing for literally anything that happened, Poppy accidentally closes the motel door in his face. Alex then enjoys a very restful night’s sleep on the floor of their motel room.
Recounting this, I actually don’t know why I like her, but somehow I do. Bader might just be one of those naturally charismatic people, like Kim Seon-ho, whose charm transcends a script.
Despite all of this, Alex is very nice to her, doesn’t so much as raise his voice once, offers to buy her something from the gas station and indulges her desire to make a wish in a well by giving her the only coin that he had. He even opens up to her about losing his mother.
I don’t know if this was just the character, if it’s a choice Blyth made, or if it’s what the director wanted, but Alex is unreasonably calm and understanding about all of the things that go wrong because of Poppy. Alex genuinely should be nominated for sainthood just for enduring that first day with her.
Overall, both Emily Bader and Tom Blyth did a good job, but I just don’t understand why Blyth insisted on speaking like he was a radio DJ at a station that plays exclusively smooth jazz.
I’m also confused about his long-term on-and-off relationship with Sarah (Sarah Catherine Hook). It was never really made clear why they kept breaking up, and this trickled into his relationship with Poppy because it seemed like the reason Alex and Poppy took so long to get together was that he wanted to stay in Ohio, and Poppy is a free spirit who doesn’t want to settle down. Except that Ohio is actually Sarah’s dream, because it’s where her career is. Except that it’s not what Sarah wants, because Sarah randomly becomes a flight attendant so that she can conveniently run into Poppy and forgive her for having a years-long emotional affair with her high-school sweetheart. So, really, I don’t know why they took so long to get together because Alex made it seem like he was waiting for Poppy to choose him, but when Poppy made a move on him, his next move was to propose to Sarah.
The entire thing is a mess, and it doesn’t quite make sense why we had to wait nine years for them to figure things out. A couple of years I could understand because it takes some time to get to know someone and to move on from a relationship as serious as Alex and Sarah’s was, but not nine.
I know my critiques of this film are plentiful and harsh, but it was still an enjoyable film, despite the copious amounts of second-hand embarrassment it forced me to endure.
Poppy and Alex are a delight to see together on screen. Their adventures are fun. If it wasn’t for all the emotional and physical cheating that they do, their friendship and love for each other would be truly heart-warming.
At the end of the day, this movie is an adaptation of a generic romance novel, the kind whose cartoon character covers make them virtually indistinguishable from one another.
It was never going to be peak cinema; it just had to be a good time. Which, despite all of its flaws, this movie was.
