Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore directorial feature and buddy road-trip comedy-drama, A Real Pain, appeals to a specific audience. It appeals to people who unironically enjoy quirky comedies featuring weirdos who do quirky things but occasionally stop the film at points to be weirdly dramatic and severe. It appeals to the crowd who want a simple, 90-minute movie they can be somewhat consistently entertained by and enjoy with friends/family. Most importantly, though, it is attractive to people who prefer the Woody Allen filmmaking style.
The director turns the camera, points it at the actors, and then does nothing else besides letting them do their thing before cutting. Of course, I am exaggerating when describing these types of filmgoers, as there’s nothing wrong with liking these types of films. However, it should be noted that based on how I described this film’s audience, it is also apparent that I am not this film’s target demographic as A Real Pain is a film that, at best, I found mildly entertaining but ultimately disposable.
It should be noted that this is not an inherently bad or poorly made film. The directing and cinematography, while nothing exceptional, do a sufficient job capturing the look and beauty of Poland while the characters travel from city to city throughout the country. Jesse Eisenberg and Kiernan Culkin, while not precisely giving groundbreaking performances as they end up playing the same kind of characters they’ve been playing for years, deliver good performances that allow them to play to their strengths (Eisenberg as the awkward family-man nerd and Culkin as the sarcastic Roman Roy-type).
Additionally, the film managed to get a few chuckles out of me as there were a handful of somewhat amusing moments. On a technical level, everything is serviceable and gets the job done, but unfortunately, “serviceable” and “good enough” is all the movie has to offer, as this is ultimately a disposable movie that I will forget about the moment this review concludes.
The most notable aspect of A Real Pain that prevents me from loving or connecting with it is how hokey, fake, and inauthentic the more dramatic moments are. There are several moments where the film screeches to a grinding halt for the characters to either deliver some big dramatic monologue/speech or engage in a serious argument with each other about their life problems and issues, and I do not buy these moments for a second.
While the performances in these dramatic scenes are not necessarily bad, it’s almost impossible for me to take them seriously because every time they happen, I only see the actors, not their characters. Eisenberg is just doing his usual shtick where he breaks down with anxiety, and Culkin is just going through the motions of being the sarcastic screw-up (a la Succession). I’ve seen them do this hundreds of times before, and to see it played out the same way again doesn’t deliver the emotional gut punch the actors think they’re providing.
Another reason these serious sequences don’t work is that the way they’re shot and framed makes it so incredibly obvious that the film is going out of its way from being comedic to dramatic for no real reason other than because it feels like it. These tone shifts never felt natural or appropriate except in the scene where the characters silently walk around a concentration camp (arguably the best moment in the film), so naturally, they often fell flat for me.
Whether it’s the scene where Kieran Culkin’s character criticizes the tour guide (Will Sharpe) or Jesse Eisenberg’s character having a breakdown while at dinner, these serious segments never feel believable or earned. The movie actively interrupts the narrative flow to create a reel of dramatic clips that filmmakers can show off at the Oscars.
However, despite my feelings towards these more dramatic scenes, I would be willing to look past them if this film had a consistently grounded tone. Unfortunately, like some Woody Allen films that inspired this movie, everything is so exaggerated and over-the-top to create severe and silly moments that nothing feels believable or real.
In a year in which I watched all sorts of weird, mind-bending films at the New York Film Festival, A Real Pain is a film in which I had to suspend my disbelief the most as almost nothing about what I was watching was grounded whatsoever. Everything is just goofy and silly until it doesn’t want to anymore and starts being super serious (which could be argued were just as ridiculous as the comedic moments). This filmmaking approach may work for some people (I am certainly in the minority with this opinion), but it does almost nothing for someone like myself.
Rating: 4/10