‘This, people, is what fucking filmmaking is about...’
I’m generally a consensus man. If loads of people love a thing, I want to tap into why they love it so I can love it too. On paper, A Real Pain should have been right up my alley. Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, sadness, comedy… these things could be inserted into that Vince McMahon meme in terms of the scale of my admiration for them. And yet…
Cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) embark on a trip to Poland to honour the memory of their recently deceased grandmother. The odd couple join a tour around various places of interest led by their enthusiastic tour guide James (Will Sharpe). David is uptight and socially awkward whereas Benji veers wildly between being everyone’s best friend to being almost nightmarishly monstrous to everyone around him. Jennifer Grey and Kurt Egyiawan round out a talented ensemble cast.
I’m a positive guy so let me begin with the positives. I loved most of the cast (more on that later). Eisenberg delivers a career-best turn in what is clearly a labour of love (he also writes and directs). His tortured monologue in the restaurant is the film’s most potent scene and he is quietly excellent throughout. Sharpe is top-notch also. Despite being billed and marketed as a comedy/drama, A Real Pain is rarely funny, but when it is, Sharpe’s beleaguered tour guide is normally the one providing the laughs. Egyiawan deserves a mention too. His character’s backstory is that he embraced Judiasim after escaping his own genocide and he brings a stillness and warmth to the film that is perhaps lacking elsewhere.
All good stuff then? Not quite, I’m afraid. The problem here is Culkin. In a film stacked with authentic, lived-in, relatable characters, Benji is not just incredibly annoying as a character, he also feels like he has been parachuted in from a different film. I didn’t like how the character was written or Culkin’s performance. I may have misinterpreted this but I think that Eisenberg wants us to have conflicted feelings about this character. To find him quite unlikeable but also sympathetic. Well… Benji is unbearable. He’s shrill, cartoonish and overbearing. I wanted more from the supporting cast and much, much less from Culkin. I seem to be alone in reaching this conclusion, however, so what the hell do I know?
I didn’t dislike A Real Pain. There were parts of it that I really loved. But in the end, it’s not funny, it’s not profound and it comes across as a second-rate Alexander Payne knockoff. If you want a genuinely effective odd-couple comedy then watch Sideways or The Holdovers instead.
