#04: A REAL PAIN

 

WRITTEN, STARRING AND DIRECTED BY Jess Eisenberg, also starring Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes. Running time 90 minutes. Budget $3million.

Two Jewish American cousins set out on a Holocaust tour of Poland in honour of their dead grandma, one Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) is a self-centred, obnoxious, arrogant, entitled, whinny, unfiltered little shit and the other, David (Jess Eisnberg) is a meek, neurotic, emotionally needy, spineless, enabling, milquetoast of a man. 

During their wretched tour of Poland, Benji emotionally and intellectually bullies his cousin and all the other guests on the tour with his ridiculous rants and emotional baggage, forcing everyone to just keep their heads down and weather his odious, tedious rants. None more so than his cousin, who we are told used to be more like a brother to Benji, but now isn't. David moved away, has a family, and holds down a job as an online ad salesman, while Benji lives in his mother's basement and smokes dope. As their smug self-indulgent tour of Poland drags its sorry arse from city to city towards the emotionally-shocking stop at Auschwitz, we have to witness Benji just being an absolute shit, spouting random outbursts of opinionated bullshit at the other characters. And apparently it's 'funny'. 

Scoring 96% on Rotten Tomato where it's described as: "Funny and sincere", "uproariously funny, quietly witty, achingly sad and excruciatingly well-observed." or a "masterpiece", this was by far the most obnoxiously self-indulgent piece of shit I've seen in a long time.

Culkin's Benji is so needy and selfish from the very beginning that you have no patience for his shenanigans, and when the film finally arrives at Auschwitz for its emotional apex and Benji's protestations are finally put into perspective, you don't feel sympathy for him you just want him to shut the fuck up and grow up, or else for someone to slap the smug out of him, because the world isn't all about him. From then on it's one last trip to Grandma's old house and some revelations that perhaps shine a tiny little light on Benji's arsehole behaviour and David's reasons for being a little bit distant before jetting back to the US of A and one last emotional beat before the whole sorry film slides to a dreary smug full stop, with a self-satisfying sigh of self-pleasure. 

I struggle to think of why anyone would think this was a, 'funny' film. There's perhaps one or two pithy comments or observations that twang a string, but miss the chord. In fact, this feels more eager to point out how some aspects of Polish life seem rather amusing - like serving sandwiches on trains that once would have transported their ancestors to their deaths amusing, or the obvious rich humour vein of war memorials. It's the sort of film where a passionate tour guide is ridiculed and humiliated for doing his job, while standing in a Jewish graveyard.

It's not all self-indulgent twaddle, The music by Chopin was wonderful and Jennifer Grey as a rich divorcee, was a revelation! How great to see her back in movies, I loved her in Red Dawn. Likewise, the supporting cast, especially Will Sharpe as the luckless tour-guide and Kurt Egyiawan as the converted Rwanda  genocide survivor were both excellent bringing some much needed humility and depth to proceedings.

To quote Horse from Ren & Stimpy, "No sir, I did not like it."

How apt to see a film whose title reflects exactly how you felt when you finally walked out of the cinema with your life 91 minutes shorter than it was. 4/10