You’d think you’re up for another Odd Couple reboot once the airport banter begins. But, truth be told, Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore turn is anything but. He was always a multi-hyphenate. Since his widely-panned turn as Lex Luthor, the actor has since redirected his energies to writing plays and contributing short stories. Then came 2022, when he first forayed into filmmaking with a self-adaptation of his audiobook, When You Finish Saving the World. Within that same year, he scored a lead role in the FX miniseries Fleishman is in Trouble. By 2023, he found himself wearing the writer-director hat once more with Emma Stone back as his producer. For this second effort, we find him reverting to his acting roots. 

Here, he plays David Kaplan, a doting family man and online marketing professional who reunites with his free-spirited cousin, Benji, played by Kieran Culkin, who’s fiery in his first post-Succession role. The opening sequence finds the disparate duo flying to Poland, where they intend to learn more about their Jewish roots. This is where A Real Pain takes off. And, given what we broadly know about world history, it’s also where the title starts making sense.  

Along the way, they meet a motley crew of fellow tourists. There’s Marcia (80s icon Jennifer Grey), a recent divorcee from California; Mark and Diane (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy), a retired couple from Shaker Heights, Ohio; and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a Rwandan genocide survivor and Jewish convert. But, really, they’re mainly incidental characters. The two cousins stay as core. 

The film essentially coincides with the tour. The tension stems from Benji’s increasingly erratic behavior, from sneaking weed into their hotel to constantly berating tour guide James (Will Sharpe) for his blasé delivery. It’s Benji who encourages the group to break from protocol on occasion, like staging a re-enactment of the Warsaw Uprising in front of its monument. But it’s also his random outbursts that disrupt the collective mood, much to David’s dismay. 

As Benji’s misbehavior reaches its peak, David is forced to bring up his cousin’s past transgressions, first in an cathartic monologue and, later, in an emotionally-charged confrontation. From there, the title takes on a double meaning. The Pain isn’t just limited to the gruesome historic details alluded to in the tour. It’s also the hurt harbored by the Kaplans in their troubled dynamic. It’s never confined in a single sequence. It’s the prevailing tone, except occasionally sugarcoated by their child-like antics and Frederic Chopin’s compositions. 

The final stretch finds the pair finally revisiting a fragment of their past. As they commemorate their visit with an age-old tradition, they’re berated by a local for posing a safety hazard. Therein lies one of the key takeaways of the film: that you can’t honor the past while disregarding the practicalities of the present. 

The reality is, that whenever we search the world for answers, we often return with more questions. Not every journey is Eat Pray Love. And not every quest leads us to the Holy Grail.  But even if our lives aren’t always better when we land home, we often find ourselves cherishing those we share our journeys with. That holds true with the Kaplans, as realized exceptionally by the two leads. And that’s where the film, in all its simplicity, hits its target.