A Real Pain (2024) Review: Two Cousins, Two Kinds of Grief

Is A Real Pain worth watching?

Yes. A Real Pain is a beautifully judged comedy-drama that packs history, grief and family friction into ninety minutes without ever feeling heavy-handed, and Kieran Culkin gives one of the great supporting performances of recent years. Jesse Eisenberg writes and directs with a light touch, letting humour and sorrow sit side by side. The only real reservation is its modest scale: this is a deliberately slight film, and viewers expecting a big dramatic arc may find it ends more quietly than they want.

What is A Real Pain about?

David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) are American cousins who were close as boys and have drifted apart as adults. After the death of their beloved grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, they reunite for a heritage tour of Poland, travelling with a small group of strangers and an earnest British guide, James (Will Sharpe), to visit sites connected to their family’s history.

David is anxious, polite and married with a young child, the kind of man who apologises reflexively. Benji is charming, unfiltered and emotionally raw, able to win over a room in seconds and ruin its mood just as quickly. As the tour moves through memorials, old neighbourhoods and places of unimaginable loss, the cousins’ different ways of carrying pain come to the surface.

A Real Pain is Eisenberg’s second feature as director. It is an American film in English, running 90 minutes. Culkin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and the screenplay won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance and a BAFTA.

Kieran Culkin steals every scene he is in

Culkin’s Benji is the film’s engine and its heart. He is funny, rude, generous and exhausting, a man who can charm a stranger at breakfast and then shatter the tour group’s composure with a blunt remark about their comfortable travel. Culkin makes those swings feel natural, and he lets the audience see the sadness underneath the charisma without spelling it out.

Eisenberg, wisely, writes himself as the more restrained counterweight. David’s nervous tics and awkward attempts to smooth things over provide much of the comedy, and his frustration with Benji is layered with envy and love. Their scenes together have the rhythm of a real family: easy laughter one moment, old resentments the next.

A heritage tour told with honesty

The film is careful about the history it touches. The tour stops, especially a visit to a concentration camp, are handled with quiet restraint, often in silence, and Eisenberg lets the places speak rather than reaching for manipulative drama. The supporting cast, including Will Sharpe’s thoughtful guide and Jennifer Grey as a fellow traveller, adds warmth and small moments of insight.

Chopin’s piano music runs throughout the soundtrack, lending the film a melancholy grace and a sense of place. The camerawork is simple and unobtrusive, keeping the focus on faces and conversations.

The cost of keeping it small

The film’s modesty is also a limitation. Some of the tour group’s members are sketched rather than developed, and a few conversations about grief and privilege feel slightly schematic, as if written to make a point. The ending deliberately avoids a neat resolution, which suits the story but may feel anticlimactic. These are small quibbles in a film that knows exactly what it wants to be.

Who should watch A Real Pain?

It suits viewers who enjoy character-driven comedy and drama, stories about family and identity, and anyone interested in how people carry inherited history. At 90 minutes, it is an easy commitment. It includes strong language, discussion of depression and suicide and scenes at Holocaust memorial sites, so it is best for older teenagers and adults.

If you enjoy it, try these next:

• Anora, another 2024 comedy-drama that finds sorrow beneath its energy and humour.
• Birdman, for another portrait of a charismatic, fragile man whose need for connection spills into chaos.

The verdict

A Real Pain is a small film with a very big heart, a funny, sad and deeply humane road trip about how families grieve and how history stays with us. Its gentle scale keeps it modest, but Kieran Culkin’s extraordinary performance and Eisenberg’s precise writing make it one of the finest comedy-dramas of its year.

Rating: 4.5/5