Actor Jesse Eisenberg previously made his directorial debut with When You Finish Saving the World, a film I did not see because it didn’t have much of a release and the buzz was not at the level where I felt like I had to seek it out. His sophomore feature, A Real Pain, had some great acclaim out of the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. There, it was snatched up by Searchlight Pictures and would eventually receive a prime awards season-friendly release. But judging by the trailers and advertising material, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into here. And what resulted when I sat in that theater today was one of my favorite things to happen when I go to the movies – feeling genuinely, throughly surprised.

David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) are cousins who were close when they were growing up, whose lives have gone in different directions. David is the kind of uptight married father living in New York, Benji is a bit aimless, but has an erratic charm that brings others to his corner before he purposely alienates them. Their grandmother, who Benji was particularly close with, has recently died, leaving them money to take a trip to Poland where they can explore the place where she once escaped the Holocaust. Long unspoken tensions and unresolved feelings begin to surface against the backdrop of their family’s history.

A Real Pain is a brilliantly constructed exercise in tone. When you hear people talk about the ‘dramedy’, very infrequently does the filmmaker achieve the balance between comedy and drama that they intend to. A Real Pain is full of laughter and catharsis. It hits much deeper than I expected emotionally, and you leave the theater feeling like you got to know these two characters on a level you may not have expected to going in. This is a great screenplay, and a handsomely mounted feature, and if this is what Jesse Eisenberg can deliver as a filmmaker every time, I’ll be very excited to see what he does next.

Kieran Culkin has a tricky tightrope to walk here, as his character is written so specifically, you need an actor who really understands who this guy is to make this character study work, and he’s phenomenal. Most viewers know him from Succession, and I never saw that show (it’s on my list, I swear), but it’s been said he’s going for something very different here. You feel like you’ve seen characters like this before, and maybe you know people like this. I actually found a lot about this guy startlingly relatable to many of my own experiences. Because he seems extroverted initially, but there’s a creeping sense of sadness right below the surface that threatens to overwhelm at every moment. Eisenberg’s character comments at one point, (I’m paraphrasing) ‘you light up a room and then you destroy everything in it’. And something about that felt so true. The early awards season buzz Culkin has received so far feels totally earned.

But don’t sleep on the Jesse Eisenberg performance. The work he’s doing here comes across as incredibly challenging as well. As the straight man of the two, initially he’s very reserved and quiet, and the story arc of this kind of movie is for the more wild, outlandish character of the two to get the other to loosen up and have fun. But the more we learn about David, the more interesting his own character journey becomes. Eisenberg delivers a monologue near the halfway point that absolutely floored me and elicited the kind of visceral emotional response I was not expecting from this movie. The fact that Eisenberg has written that scene, directed a beautiful film, and has basically given himself the best role he’s had since The Social Network, is all kind of remarkable. I look forward to what he does next as a filmmaker, but I also miss him as an actor. I think we can all leave this film agreeing that we need more Jesse Eisenberg in our lives.

We also have a very good supporting cast here. Will Sharpe, who was a standout in season two of The White Lotus, plays the man leading the tour through Poland our two leads have scheduled. I did not recognize him from The White Lotus, he’s playing a totally different kind of role here, and I enjoyed watching him. Jennifer Grey appears as Marcia, a woman also taking this tour, and I did not immediately recognize her, but I also have not seen her in anything for years. She looks great and she’s still got great comedic timing. I would love her to pop up in more things and see something of a career renaissance as a character actress, and I hope this leads to more work for her.

A Real Pain falls into the small group of movies I see every year that I quantify as a ‘no notes’ movie. There is not a single thing about this movie I would change. It’s got real, loud, boisterous laughs and a some earned, cathartic tears. It’s a thoughtful examination of cultural history and generational trauma, it’s a bit of a travelogue, it’s a road movie, but more than anything, it’s a character study of these two broken people who needed this experience, needed each other, in order to heal. And it never went where I expected, and it just kept surprising me in the most satisfying ways. It will play fine later down the line as a streaming title, but I always like to champion really great original films like this, so I would absolutely go see this in a movie theater if it’s playing near you. It’s one of the best films of 2024.