Josh Reviews A Real Pain

A Real Pain was written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, who also stars as David Kaplan, alongside Kieran Culkin, who plays Benji Kaplan.  David and Benji are cousins.  Following the death of their grandmother, they’ve decided to use some of the money she left them to go on a Jewish heritage tour through Poland.  The tour will take them through several sites associated with the Holocaust, including a visit to the concentration camp Majdanek.  The boys are hoping to find the place in Poland where their grandmother grew up, and to reconnect in some way with their family’s Jewish roots.  But David and Benji have extremely different personalities, and they find themselves vacillating between bonding and butting heads as the trip unfolds…

I loved this film!  It’s strange and off-putting at times, with some tough dramatic moments… while also containing a lot of humor and unexpected moments.  I thoroughly enjoyed going on this journey.  Jesse Eisenberg’s script is wonderful, able to weave the comedy and the drama together in a way that felt compelling and kept me gripped into the story.  There is real emotional depth here, and also a lightness that kept the film enjoyable.  And I appreciated that the script doesn’t resolve in any sort of pat, easy answers.  The Holocaust is too momentous an event to be easily wrestled with, and on a smaller scale, David and Benji’s different personalities and worldviews aren’t easily reconciled.  I respect Mr. Eisenberg’s intelligent script for recognizing that neither aspect of this story could be given a simple Hollywood ending.

The film is anchored by Mr. Eisenberg and Mr. Culkin, who each deliver a powerhouse of a performance.  They each fully and completely inhabit their characters; the naturalism of their performances, as well as the many aspects of the story that have been taken from Mr. Eisenberg’s real-life experiences, almost make it feels as if these two actors are just playing themselves on screen.  But, of course, they’re not — this is just an aspect of how fully they’re each inhabiting these characters.  Mr. Eisenberg chose well in Mr. Culkin as his co-star.  I loved the oil-and-water chemistry play out between these two guys.  These cousins love each other, but they’re worlds apart in terms of their personalities and worldviews.  They each have an extremely hard time understanding where the other is coming from.  Both actors bring such a sparkle to their performance that they’re able to be extremely funny together, and then slide quickly into emotionally moving drama.  This is hard to do, but these two make it look easy.

It’s the bursts of character-based comedy, by the way, that are key to this film being as enjoyable as it is.  I laughed a lot while watching this film, even though the film ventures into some tough territory.

Who knew Jesse Eisenberg was so great a writer, and also so great a director?!!  I’ve already praised this film’s script repeatedly in this review, and as a director, Mr. Eisenberg demonstrates a confident hand at the helm.  I was impressed.  He skillfully balances the tone — keeping the film shifting nimbly back and forth from comedy to drama and back again — as well as the ensemble.  This film belongs to the two main actors, but it also features a lovely ensemble, and Mr. Eisenberg does a nice job allowing each of the other characters some time in the spotlight, so we can get to know and like them all.  I want to highlight Will Sharpe, who is great as the well-meaning but somewhat hapless tour guide James, and Jennifer Grey (yes, that Jennifer Grey!), who is wonderful as Marcia, a recently-divorced woman with whom Benji strikes up a friendship of sorts.  Ms. Grey gives a fantastic performance.  I wish she was working more often these days!

By the way, I’d thought at first that A Real Pain was Mr. Eisenberg’s directorial debut, but it turns out it’s his second film.  His first came out in 2023: it’s called When You Finish Saving the World and stars Julianne Moore (The Big Lebowski, Children of Men, Game Change) and Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things, It, Ghostbusters: Afterlife).  I’m bummed I missed that (it doesn’t look like it got much of a release); I’ll have to track it down!

I highly recommend A Real Pain.  I’m sorry I didn’t get to see it before I made my end-of-the-year “Best Movies of 2024” list — if I had, A Real Pain definitely would have had a spot on the list.

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