A Real Pain
Eisenberg's script is brought to life by an electric performance from Kieran Culkin, who adds depth to his own actorly niche as the charming, hyperactive and exhaustingly chaotic Benji.
Directed by Jesse Eisenberg
Starring Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg
Opens 8 January 2025
7/10
Last summer in Sasquatch Sunset, Jesse Eisenberg donned prosthetic make up and fur to play a roughly slouching beta cryptid. Now in A Real Pain he stars as a online marketing salesman taking a Holocaust tour of Poland with his charismatic but troubled cousin. But in both he’s playing what’s become a familiar Eisenberg type - the neurotic, uptight, nebbish, a kind of Woody Allen without the compulsive wisecracks.
Following 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World this is the second feature he’s written and directed, and it’s another nicely observed, quietly funny tale of familial discord. But this time his script is brought to life by an electric performance from Kieran Culkin, who adds depth to his own actorly niche as the charming, hyperactive and exhaustingly chaotic Benji.
It’s a livewire portrait of intergenerational trauma - the grandchild of holocaust survivors turning into a midlife burnout - and brings real urgency what might otherwise feel like a rather stagey Alexander Payne ensemble piece, straining a little too hard for significance.
