'A Real Pain' review: Jesse Eisenberg-Kieran Culkin movie is small-scale charmer

It’s an unlikely premise for a road-trip comedy: Two mismatched Jewish-American cousins, uptight David and high-spirited Benji, decide to visit a lesser-known Polish concentration camp. Yes, the usual clash of personalities follows, but “A Real Pain” is anything but farcical or formulaic. Written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg – and inspired by his own family history – it’s a small-scale charmer that nicely blends prickly humor, moments of tenderness and echoes of the generational trauma of the Holocaust.

It almost goes without saying that Eisenberg plays David, a successful but fretful New Yorker who has a wife,  little daughter and unglamorous job selling internet ad-banners. It’s the perfect role for an actor who has made a career of playing twitchy, tightly wound types in movies like “The Social Network” and “Zombieland.” But this is no Eisenberg vehicle: The director selflessly hands every scene to his co-star, Kieran Culkin (“Succession”), as the bouncy, boyish Benji. He’s one of those guys who warms to everyone and vice-versa. When we first meet Benji, at the airport, he even manages to befriend the TSA agent. (“She is so dope,” he marvels.)

The cousins are taking this trip in honor of their late grandmother, who was raised in Poland, and we learn that Benji hasn’t been the same since her death. After joining a Holocaust tour group led by the soft-spoken James (a very good Will Sharpe), Benji’s dark side shows through. He befriends an older divorcee, Marsha (Jennifer Grey), and bonds with a Rwandan convert to Judaism, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), but also lashes out at an unsuspecting James and throws embarrassing tantrums at unpredictable moments. When the group finally visits the chilling Majdanek concentration camp (in a sequence that was filmed on location) it’s anybody’s guess how the emotionally fragile Benji will react.

Serving as a template for this movie – perhaps unconsciously -- is Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” with David as the watchful Sal Paradise and Benji as the roman candle Dean Moriarty. As Benji breezes selfishly through life, either brightening a room or ruining a perfectly nice dinner, David waffles between hero worship, anger and pity. In every scene, these two keep an arm’s length distance. The arm belongs to David; there’s too much emotional risk to let his charismatic cousin any closer.

“A Real Pain” ends with a poignancy that only a very good film can earn. The final moments, which take us back to the airport in which we started, might even make you think of Kerouac’s final wonderings about his mesmerizing but deeply troubled old friend: “nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman