Did you get my musical allusion: Jesse’s Girl=Jesse’s Mural? I try. A Real Pain is Jesse’s mural of modern day Poland.
Ok, it seems the populace seems to just want light on heavy stories this year: Anora, and now A Real Pain. Which is fine I guess, it’s like a holiday gathering where polite folks don’t want to bring up politics.
But I’ll stick by my number one movie of the year The Substance and my number two as Sing Sing. But I digress, let me give Jesse Eiseneberg some love, because I do think he is gifted in both acting and writing.
I did enjoy A Real Pain. The writing was crisp and fast and it was very much like a later Woody Allen film, as Jesse is so good as the nervous o.c.d. type guy with a sharp wit. Likewise, his cousin, acted with rogueish panache by Kieran Culkin. I don’t know Kieran from Adam (not a Succession fan), but have an impression that his role isn’t to far from the real. At any rate, it’s good to have another Robert Downey Jr type in our midst.
The story was just a little too easy breezy, with the exception of the restaurant dining room scene. Here, I thought we were getting somewhere and did get to the core of things if only briefly. The irony is that Jesse’s character doesn’t get enough accolades as the ‘do the right thing responsible one’, whereas, the fly by the seat of his pants cousin seems to get all the gushing praise. And yet that’s what’s also happening with reviews; Life imitating art, I guess.
One additional positive; I did love the Chopin piano score and Jesse’s stopping it during the Holocaust tour…very effective!
