We round up the reviews for Jesse Eisenberg’s new film which also stars Kieran Culkin.
The Guardian: ***** “With no great fanfare, Jesse Eisenberg has just given us a masterpiece. This is an effortlessly witty, fluent and astringent comedy with a very serious overcurrent.”
The Daily Mail: ***** “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.”
The FT: **** ” It helps that Culkin is not far from faultless. Yet he also benefits from a deft director who balances the relationship of the mismatched Kaplans and the weight of history with wit and melancholy. Eisenberg can be a mixed blessing in front of the camera. Behind it, he is a tonic.”
The Independent: **** “Eisenberg fills that anxious blank space with genuine questions seeking genuine answers, delivered by the comforting typewriter patter of his own voice, and a poignant, wrecking ball performance by Culkin.”
The Telegraph: **** “Eisenberg writes, directs and stars in a film that manages to be ruefully perceptive and laugh-out-loud funny, often at the same time.”
The Upcoming: **** “ Real Pain proves that even crowd-pleasing forms of entertainment can grow within its audience. Through passionate and personal decisions, Eisenberg’s latest feat manages to elicit laughter, before bequeathing its viewers with a number of punchy questions about accounting for the past, the toll it can take on mental health, and an incessant guilt regarding one’s own privilege.”
Empire: **** “For all the clever dialogue (Benji: “Money is heroin for boring people”; David: “What does that even mean?”) and comedy of embarrassment, A Real Pain easily holds its own in the gravitas stakes. It is a testament to Eisenberg’s tonal grasp that the group’s visit to the Majdanek concentration camp, with the blue residue of Zyklon B gas still on the walls, feels apposite and extremely moving.”
The Arts Desk: **** “It’s a difficult film to categorise, being part comedy, part road movie, part psychotherapy session and part personal memoir. Perhaps Woody Allen might have called it a “situation tragedy”. It’s a clever, complex piece, but Eisenberg has made it look breezily simple.”
Time Out: **** “In an assured second directorial effort (after 2023’s When You Finish Saving the World) that owes a little something to the thorny naturalism of Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip, Eisenberg-the-filmmaker leans on Eisenberg-the-actor to keep things grounded. “