I watched A Real Pain and I really liked it! 4/5
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Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a movie that sneaks up on you. It starts as a sharp, neurotic comedy about two cousins bickering their way through a Jewish heritage tour in Poland, but before you know it, it morphs into something deeper—an exploration of grief, history, and the ways we hurt and heal each other. It’s funny, melancholic, and at times profoundly uncomfortable, and thanks to two fantastic performances from Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, it never loses its bite.
This is Eisenberg’s second film as a writer-director, and if When You Finish Saving the World was his warm-up, A Real Pain is him finding his groove. The film is packed with his signature fast-talking, self-deprecating humor, but it’s also more mature, more reflective. It wrestles with big ideas—legacy, guilt, mental illness—without ever losing sight of its core: two estranged family members trying (and mostly failing) to reconnect.
Culkin and Eisenberg Are the Perfect Odd Couple
Kieran Culkin’s Benji is the film’s chaotic heart. He’s loud, impulsive, and emotionally volatile—a walking contradiction who can go from charming to insufferable in seconds. Culkin plays him with the same unpredictable energy that made his turn as Roman Roy in Succession so compelling, but here, there’s a rawness underneath the bravado. Benji is someone who wears his pain on his sleeve, who refuses to play by the rules of polite society, and Culkin makes him impossible to look away from.
Eisenberg’s David, by contrast, is buttoned-up and repressed. He’s the guy who follows the itinerary, who rolls his eyes at Benji’s antics but secretly envies his reckless passion. Their dynamic is classic Odd Couple comedy, but there’s an underlying tension that keeps it from being purely lighthearted. These two men should be close—they share a history, a culture, a grief—but their wildly different ways of processing the past keep them at odds.
One of the film’s most gut-wrenching moments comes late at night, when Benji confronts David about why he never calls, why he never visits. David tries to deflect, but finally, through tears, he admits the truth: after Benji’s suicide attempt, he couldn’t handle being around him. The idea of someone so full of life wanting to die was too much. It’s a brutally honest moment, and both actors absolutely nail it.
Comedy and Tragedy in Equal Measure
Despite its heavy themes, A Real Pain is frequently hilarious. Eisenberg’s script is packed with sharp dialogue, and Benji’s complete lack of a filter leads to some painfully awkward (but undeniably funny) encounters. In one standout scene, Benji hijacks a historical site visit to stage a dramatic reenactment of the Warsaw Uprising, roping in their entire tour group while David stands off to the side, mortified. It’s absurd and cringeworthy, but also kind of endearing—Benji may be inappropriate, but he cares.
The film’s humor is always tinged with sadness, though, and that’s what makes it work. Benji’s outbursts aren’t just comic relief; they’re coping mechanisms. David’s uptightness isn’t just a personality trait; it’s armor. And as the movie unfolds, it becomes clear that both of them are, in their own ways, struggling to reconcile their personal problems with the weight of their family’s history.
A Thoughtful Exploration of Jewish Identity
One of the film’s smartest touches is the way it plays with the idea of historical tourism. The Jewish heritage tour is supposed to be a way for descendants of Holocaust survivors to connect with their past, but Eisenberg subtly questions how meaningful that connection really is. Benji, ever the cynic, is put off by the sanitized, packaged nature of the tour—why is there a gift shop at a Holocaust memorial? Why are they traveling first-class through a country that once sought to erase them? David, meanwhile, takes comfort in the structure, in the guided narrative, but even he can’t help but feel the disconnect.
The film doesn’t offer easy answers, but it raises fascinating questions about what it means to carry the weight of history. Can you ever truly feel the past, or are you just performing grief? And what do you do with that history once you leave the tour and return to everyday life?
A Few Minor Stumbles
If there’s one flaw in A Real Pain, it’s that the third act feels slightly rushed. The film spends so much time building tension between David and Benji that when their final confrontation comes, it’s over almost too quickly. And while the ending—David leaving a visitation stone on his doorstep, Benji returning to his usual airport routine—feels thematically fitting, it’s also a little abrupt.
There’s also the fact that some viewers might find Benji too abrasive to fully invest in. Culkin is brilliant, but his character is a lot, and if you don’t have patience for loud, self-destructive man-children, parts of the film might wear thin.
Final Thoughts: A Funny, Heartbreaking, and Deeply Human Film
A Real Pain is exactly what its title suggests: a movie that makes you laugh, makes you wince, and occasionally makes you want to scream. Eisenberg balances comedy and tragedy with a deft hand, and Culkin delivers one of the best performances of his career. It’s a film about grief, about guilt, about the complicated ways we love and fail the people closest to us.
It’s also, in its own way, a love letter to Jewish resilience—to the messy, painful, ridiculous, beautiful ways people keep moving forward, even when the past feels unbearable.