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“A Real Pain” will officially become available to rent/purchase on digital platforms starting Wednesday, Dec. 31, just in time to ring in the new year with two neurotic Jews. The film will also release on Blu-ray starting Tuesday, Feb. 4, and is available to pre-order on Amazon.
The Jesse Eisenberg-directed film, which picked up four Golden Globes this year, stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as mismatched New York Jewish cousins as they travail Poland in honor of their late grandmother who lived there before the Holocaust. David (Eisenberg) is a buttoned up neurotic on OCD medicine while Benji is a charming fuckup with no prospects but a mouth that is equally hilarious and malignantly obnoxious (Culkin). On their journey, the two visit a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, come to grips with a suicide attempt and wonder about how their own pain compares with the pain their ancestors endured during the Holocaust. At the Sundance world premiere, sobs and cries could be heard from the audience as David and Benji grapple with their past and their pain.
“Eisenberg has a gift for interweaving airy comedy and gravitas — the unbearable lightness of good screenwriting — that’s reminiscent of what Richard Linklater brought off in the ‘Before’ films,” Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in his review, in which he included the film as one of his year’s critics picks.
Popular on Variety “‘A Real Pain’ is an easy watch, a buddy movie rooted in the existential fun of verbal sparring,” he continued. “Yet it has an emotional kick that sneaks up on you. ‘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.”
Stream “A Real Pain” on Prime Video starting Dec. 31.
