Critic Reviews

With A Real Pain, [Eisenberg] demonstrates impeccable judgment and great skill at balancing sardonic wit with piercing solemnity in a movie full of feeling, in which no emotion is unearned.

A Real Pain is an easy watch, a buddy movie rooted in the existential fun of verbal sparring. Yet it has an emotional kick that sneaks up on you.

Admittedly, A Real Pain is an acquired taste; like a top-flight IPA, it is at once overly aggressive and serenely balanced.

A Real Pain is a fluidly blended amalgam of pleasing, approachable subgenres, including an odd-couple buddy flick, a consciousness-raising road movie and a charged family melodrama.

It’s a powerful feeling to witness art that reminds us that all aspects of our existence are valuable, especially our pain.

This is a story that is perfectly weighted between bleak and warm, poignant and irreverent.

With “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg — who wrote, directed and stars in the film — pulls off a kind of magic trick. He’s made a movie with backdrops of pain and despair, both personal and existential, that is also funny, charming and something approaching uplifting. Ta-da!

With “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg has invented a new genre we can call “the Kieran Culkin movie.”

Culkin walks a line between obnoxiousness and delight; it’s a performance both liberating and touched by a deeper, more inarticulate sadness.

Pivoting gut-punching drama and whip-smart comedy around a career-best turn from Kieran Culkin, 'A Real Pain' is a real treat of the highest caliber.