Genre : Comedy-Drama / Road Movie / Family Drama

Runtime : 1hr 30min

Language : English

IMDb : 7/10

Rotten Tomatoes : 96%

Letterboxd : 3.7/5

Metacritic : 85%

Wikipedia : Link

Director : Jesse Eisenberg

Cast

Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy

Plot

A Real Pain follows two cousins, David and Benji Kaplan, who reunite to go on a Jewish heritage tour through Poland in memory of their late grandmother. David leads a stable, grounded life — married, working, trying to honor traditions — while Benji is more impulsive, emotionally untethered, and unsettled by the loss. As they travel, they visit places significant to their grandmother’s life, including her hometown, and confront the family history she carried with her: trauma, memories, and stories that neither cousin fully grasped before. Old tensions between them surface — David’s sense of obligation and order clashes with Benji’s frankness and spontaneity. Along the journey, they meet other people on tours, encounter difficult reminders of the Holocaust, and wrestle with what legacy means. Humor arises in awkward, intimate moments; sorrow in reflections; connection in shared vulnerability. By the end, the trip becomes less about honoring an ancestor and more about reconnecting with each other, understanding their past, and accepting who they are now.