Scott

A Real Pain is a lovely story of estranged cousins reconnecting after the death of their Polish grandmother by of taking a trip to Poland on a guided tour. The leads are played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin. Benji (Culkin) is a free spirit with a warm and honest sense of humor who is confident and funny, and while these traits are organic to his personality he uses these traits to cover up the pain and sadness that lies within him. David (Eisenberg) a father and husband with a career who is uncomfortable w emotion but has a big heart who cares deeply about his cousin. Although cousins they feel like great friends from childhood that took different paths and through a tragic event find the oppurtune time to reconnect. I related to both characters. Benji in that he is well practiced at masking his pain through humor so that he doesn't have to talk about it and David, in that although I'm not married and don't have kids I took the safe career path which provides a level of security but have found there's a longing for more from life. The setting of Poland is shot beautifully and the tour locations are appropriate in helping the characters grieve and deal w their inner turmoil. The side characters in the tour group feel like real people you would meet on a tour like this. Nothing in the film feels forced, especially there not being a contrived love story which often happens in films of similar themes and ultimately detracts from the central story. The glue of the film is the score. Instead of using contemporary pop music, the music is classical, primarily Chopin, is tonally perfect and doesn't overshadow the story but matches the mood of the characters melancholy. The movie perfectly bookends itself and doesnt have the typical tie up the bow ending. Eisenberg's direction, the acting (especially Culkin) and all other technical aspects of the film are superb and were handled w care. Theres a perfect blend of humor and inner sadness that looms over the central characters. I would recommend this film to anyone, especially families and most especially families of Jewish heritage. Hats off to Eisenberg on his directorial debut. 5/5

Reprehensible. The innumerable contrivences begin w the lazy title. The writers had the unmitigated gaul to name the family of the film, Stone, in a failed attempt to be clever, sullying the name of an artist who actually created art and had originality. Sly should sue for defamation and slander. These aren't Everyday People. The Stone family is a rich, conservative, successful, snobby family that hides under a veil of trying extra hard to seem like a working class, liberal, bohemian and accepting group of people. If you dont know sign language or accept everyone for who they are wo question, this fsmily thinks youre a pos. When SJP, enters the film they see in her, what they really are, uptight and phony. She represents the mirror to what they really are and says what she really feels and naturally they judge and resent her for it. The writing is horrendous. There's no hint of subtlety. The word contrived isn't strong enough for the obvious setups and telegraphed exposition dumps, which make each scene expediously more and more cringy. Every character is a caricature of what these types of people really are. They use the worn out family-movie-sympathy-trope of cancer as a plot device that will bring the family together, in a weak attempt to make its audience sympathize for the most unlikable character, the mother played by Diane Keaton who progressively gets more annoying as the story unfolds. The leads have zero chemistry, making it apparent when the sibling swap love story unfolds. Ray Charles couldve seen it coming. Everett is an uptight prick, who speaks his terrible dialogue in whispers and is an extension of his boring family and falls head over heels in love w his gfs sister at first sight. Craig T Nelson is insufferable. The gay, deaf son character, whose in an interracial relationship only exists as a plot device to make these rich snobs seem liberal and accepting. I have no doubt the writer considered putting him a wheelchair in order to give him a yet another layer of plot armor. He serves no real purpose as a character and has no personality beyond being used as a plot whorre by sophomoric writers to make us hate the sjp character even more. Rachel mcadams' character only exists to be the antagonist to sjp. Luke Wilson exists for the same reason, except he's the blatant love interest, the guy who will help this careerist break out of her shell and the only person who accepts her. And so on for every other character, none of them have a real personality and they're all phony af. Adding insult to paralyzing injury they have the nerve to use music from Home Alone in the obligatory 'were just a silly fun loving family, lets be friends' scene. The only thing that wouldve improved this garbage pile wouldve been for the Amityville horror dad to go room to room w a shotgunn on Xmas eve. A more apt use for the budget of this Xmas movie would've been to feed the hungry and give shelter to those in need because it provides zero warmth to its audience which it repeatedly insults for an excruciating hour and 45 minutes that rivals waiting at the dmv, listening to nails on a chalk board while having your eyes kept open w a staple gun.