BRIAN VINER reviews A Real Pain: A masterpiece from the heir to Woody Allen
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Verdict: Truly wonderful. Rating:. Jesse Eisenberg has said that he was inspired to write A Real Pain after coming across an online advert promoting tours of the concentration camp Auschwitz, with lunch included. He has parlayed that darkly comic irony — the unwitting but shrieking dissonance between the monumental evil and human misery implied by one word, Auschwitz, and the lush comforts of modern-day tourism — into a truly wonderful film.
![[Kieran Culkin (left) and Jesse Eisenberg (right) as their characters Benji and David in A Real Pain]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/10/00/93938887-14268889-image-a-11_1736468235270.jpg)
A Real Pain is uproariously funny, quietly witty, achingly sad and excruciatingly well-observed. That's quite a trick to pull off inside an hour and a half. Eisenberg plays David, with Kieran Culkin (newly anointed with a Golden Globe for his brilliant performance) as his first cousin Benji.
![[Jennifer Grey as her character Marcia in a scene from Jessie Eisenberg's film A Real Pain]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/10/00/93938883-14268889-image-a-12_1736468242372.jpg)
New York Jews, born just a few weeks apart, they have always been close despite the differences in their personalities, not to mention their hyphenated disorders. David, married with a son, is obsessive-compulsive, socially anxious, introspective. Benji is single, sociable and charismatic. He is also hyper-active and deeply troubled, with attention-deficit issues.
![[Nicole Kidman as Romy, a corporate hotshot who seems to be happily married to Jacob (Antonio Banderas)]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/10/00/93938901-14268889-image-a-14_1736468641062.jpg)
Will Sharpe (left) and Jesse Eisenberg (right) as their characters James and David and in a scene from A Real Pain. Kieran Culkin (left) and Jesse Eisenberg (right) as their characters Benji and David in A Real Pain. We meet them as they prepare to leave for Poland, where they will join a 'Holocaust tour' as a way of honouring their grandmother Dory, a survivor, who has recently died.
![[But then falls, heavily, for one of her company's new intake of interns, the dishy, ultra-confident Samuel (Harris Dickinson)]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/10/00/93938899-14268889-image-a-13_1736468557322.jpg)
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