‘A Real Pain’: Jesse Eisenberg’s Buddy Comedy Entertains, But Underwhelms

Coming hot off of the Christmas period, it’s hard to not relate to parts of A Real Pain and its meditations on family. Two cousins with growing distance between them, David (Jesse Eisenberg, also writer and director) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), are on a tour through Poland in honour of their recently deceased grandmother, who escaped persecution in the Holocaust by fleeing to America. They naturally chafe up against one another as two men at vastly different points in their lives, all while reckoning with what their family history means to them.

A Real Pain authentically captures the terse feeling that often comes after time spent with people you love; from the moment they come together in the first five minutes of the film, the unresolved tensions between David and Benji are palpable simply in their different approaches to living. They have different methods of interfacing with people and processing the heavy emotions that this trip brings up about their grandmother, their family’s relationship to history and how it compares to their modern lives – especially Benji, who is transparently a troubled man.

As a result, A Real Pain is both emotionally affecting and quite funny, especially for a buddy-comedy road trip film set against the backdrop of the Holocaust. The quasi-theatrical script is a strong element of the film, effectively exploring the relationship that David and Benji have to their grandmother and the absurdity inherent to taking a holiday for the purpose of reliving her suffering. Eisenberg’s direction is solid overall, illustrating the beauty of Poland while acknowledging the scars that remain post-World War 2 – though the pacing often accidentally switches from feeling deliberate to slow.

The wonderful, yet safe performances of A Real Pain

However, I have to admit that I found myself feeling conflicted about A Real Pain‘s lead performances quite a bit. Eisenberg and Culkin are both really good, as they always are, in this film – yet I couldn’t help but feel their performances were rather derivative of their usual screen personas.

Eisenberg has made a career out of playing off-kilter, nervy guys, while Culkin has rightly racked up acclaim for playing men who are equal parts charismatic and miserable (see his brilliant work on Succession). Despite their wonderful charisma with each other and the cast, a real depth of performance and their conceptually perfect pairing, there’s nothing about Eisenberg or Culkin’s performances in A Real Pain that will surprise you if you’re already a fan of their work.

Don’t be mistaken, though: A Real Pain is still a good movie with plenty to say about family, history and the guilt of modernity. But personally, I just couldn’t shake the sense that everything in the film – the performances, the themes, the story – has ultimately been done before.

★★★

A Real Pain is in cinemas now.