Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain
A REAL PAIN
There's an incredible thrill in watching actors you've long admired tackle, and thrive in, roles that are unlike any they've previously played. Yet there's a similar kick in watching actors play their widely recognized “types” so flawlessly, and with such fresh enthusiasm, that these roles feel like ideal distillations of their portrayers' talent and presence. I'm thinking of Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood and Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich … and also, now, Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain.
I have to presume that Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed, designed the character of David Kaplan – an anxious, fast-talking worrywart who tries to cover his panic with a veneer of deadpan calm – knowing that he was the only logical choice for the role. If someone asked you to fashion the prototypical Jesse Einsenberg screen figure, you'd come up with a David Kaplan, too. But while I don't know whether Eisenberg, in crafting David's cousin Benji, had Culkin in mind from the start, this performer also seems not just perfectly but inevitably cast, particularly if you're familiar with his work (especially during seasons three and four) on Succession. Like Roman Roy, Benji is someone you frequently want to throttle – the kind of guy who, as happens in A Real Pain, casually usurps your snacks and then offers you one as if he's doing you the favor. Also like Roman, though, Benji's feelings are so close to the surface, and so easily read through Culkin's translucent emotionalism, that he's like the living embodiment of an open wound. Benji may be as obnoxious as he is charismatic, but there's a reason that everyone he encounters, even those he has insulted, takes such a shine to him. They sense, for good reason, the intense damage behind Benji's charming facade, and understand that this man-child doesn't need a swift kick in the ass so much as a hug.
In short, largely because of who's playing them, David and Benji feel like people we already know and (generally) like from A Real Pain's first minutes, which makes them thoroughly welcome traveling companions through Eisenberg's modestly scaled yet hugely satisfying buddy comedy slash travelogue slash profound meditation on unspeakable grief. Cousins who were joined at the hip as youths yet grew apart in adulthood, David is now a middle-class drudge with a wife, kid, and career creating Web-site ad banners, while Benji is a single, seemingly directionless stoner with no job or prospects to speak of. Following their grandmother's passing, the two inherited money that she hoped they'd spend on a trip to Poland. Grandma was a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust thanks to, as David puts it, “a thousand miracles,” and the New York-based cousins consequently embark on a European tour that includes stops in Warsaw, various cemeteries and town squares, and the Majdanek concentration camp – sites where they can honor their grandmother before making a final, off-tour trek to her childhood home.
With the title to Eisenberg's film first appearing next to a tight closeup on Culkin's mug, we're immediately invited to laugh, because “A Real Pain” seems to be describing Benji even before he opens his mouth. And for all his outward bonhomie – upon first seeing David at the airport, Benji embraces him with a love as genuine as it is ferocious – a real pain is precisely what he is. He may make fast friends with the TSA agent and advise David not to talk during the stewardess' safety speech because “she's just doing her job,” but Benji is also clearly capable of offhandedly biting rudeness and off-putting self-righteousness, and he routinely makes others feel like crap. In one devastating scene, after their British tour guide James (a marvelous Will Sharpe) begins another long-winded recitation of Polish history, Benji curtly demands of him more empathy and fewer factoids; you can see how Benji manages to annihilate the man's entire sense of being in just a few seconds. Because he's funny, quick-witted, and ingratiating, it's evident that James and those on his tour – a soulful, endearing ensemble composed of Jennifer Grey, Daniel Oreskes, Lika Sadoby, and Kurt Egyiawan – truly want to like Benji. He just makes it very, very difficult.
No one knows this better than David, and Eisenberg's every reaction to Benji's uncouthness is a miniature master class in contradictory emotions. Roughly an hour into the movie, Eisenberg gives himself a lengthy monologue in which, after Benji has momentarily ruined yet another group outing, David explains, “I love him, and I hate him, and I want to kill him, and I want to be him.” As beautifully as Eisenberg delivers these words, the sentiment is almost unnecessary (for us, not David's listeners), given that the love/hate/kill/be of it all registered long beforehand. It's in the rest of David's confession – when we discover the enormity of the real pain that Benji and David are carrying – that Eisenberg's soliloquy transcends the explanatory and achieves the sublime. Everyone on that tour, even the non-Jewish James, is quietly hurting, and as it progresses, A Real Pain offers a gentle yet firm reminder about how tragedy can be endured. Principally, by sharing it.
It's probably important to stress at this point that, yes, Eisenberg's film is indeed a comedy, if one that causes you to shed tears as often as you giggle. Barreling through reams of clever, knowing dialogue with similarly motor-mouthed skill – a lot of conversation occurs in this tight 90 minutes – the two stars are masterful in their zippy repartee, and there are plenty of motifs and running gags that keep paying dividends. (I particularly loved David's escalating hostility as his cousin continually won over people who should've been aching to smack him.) As a director, Eisenberg also times this badinage with startling precision, seeming to know just when to cut off a routine for maximum comedic impact, our heroes' rushed reunion with the tour group via a second train a spectacular case study in employing punchlines as punctuation.
Despite the glorious banter, however, when I think of Eisenberg's film going forward, I'll likely be thinking of remarkable moments that boast no conversation at all. Benji staring in horror at a crematorium oven and flinching when David tenderly puts a hand on his shoulder. The tour group placing stones on a century-old headstone, a gesture repeated later with a far different outcome. David and Benji embracing at the airport, one of the men not only refusing to break the hug, but intensifying it. And, in what is easily the film performance of Culkin's career to date, every single instance of Benji registering with his expressions what he can't verbalize, from his sardonic yet tearful eye roll when David sings his praises (while simultaneously chastising him) to his barely hushed sobs on a train car to his reaction when tour guide James, cowed but grateful, gives his charge a hug of his own. I still haven't recovered from Culkin's touched, flabbergasted reaction after James walks away and Benji barely chokes out, “What a nice guy!” From start to finish, A Real Pain is an absolute pleasure.
RED ONE
I suppose it was inevitable that one of Hollywood's annual “Let's save Christmas!” romps would be fashioned into a $250-million-budgeted action comedy for The Rock. But when that fateful day arrived, I had hoped the resulting spectacle wouldn't be as dully serviceable as director Jake Kasdan's Red One, which, to my deep chagrin, doesn't have the decency to be a complete catastrophe.
I'm sorry, but if you're gonna give me Dwayne Johnson as a magical enforcer to Santa Claus who, honest to God, at one point says “And I was only one day away from retirement ...” completely without irony, you'd better also give me something I can hoot at for years to come. This thing, though, is too bland to inspire gleeful mockery. Although it looks oddly cheap considering its exorbitant price tag, the film is competent, professional, earnest, and harmless. I would've traded every one of those attributes for even a hint of garish, unseemly excess – anything that would make me feel something, even utter loathing, for what was transpiring on screen. Instead, I simply stared at Kasdan's and screenwriter Chris Morgan's flavor-free yuletide cookie with total indifference. While I bow to no one in my hatred for 2022's Will Ferrell/Ryan Reynolds Christmas Carol knockoff Spirited, at least, unlike Red One, it didn't nearly put me to sleep.
Proving yet again that he has lost all interest in developing or sharing movie chemistry with another male A-lister, Johnson plays Santa's head of North Pole security Callum Drift, who's forced to team up with Chris Evans' wiseacre hacker Jack O'Malley after Kris Kringle (an unsettlingly buff J.K. Simmons) is kidnapped and his holiday's future threatened. The last time Johnson starred in a bloated, expensive action comedy with “red” in its title, in 2021's Red Notice, you could practically see his contempt for Ryan Reynolds, and the latter's for him, oozing off the screen into a slimy green puddle. My guess is that Evans, having viewed that atrocious movie, decided to attempt what his Marvel-mate didn't or couldn't and tease out some honest rapport, because it sure looks like Captain America is having a laugh – mostly at his co-star's expense – and Black Adam is having none of it. With intentional odd-couple pairings of this sort, of course, the leads aren't meant to be buddy-buddy. Yet we shouldn't be able to sense legitimate behind-the-scenes tension, either, and the only times I was actively invested in Kasdan's film were when Callum looked ready to sock Jack in the jaw – by which I mean when Johnson looked ready to sock Evans in the jaw, preferably when cameras weren't rolling. That makes up about half of the movie's running time and Red One still doesn't deliver any fun.
What are we treated to instead? A lot of obvious, mediocre vamping by Kiernan Shipka as the kidnapping witch Gryla. A largely wasted Lucy Liu as Callum's boss and a depressingly wasted Bonnie Hunt as Mrs. Claus. (As lovely as it was to see this comic treasure again after so many years spent voicing animated roles, would it have killed the filmmakers to give Hunt even one joke?!) Simmons' reliable refusal, admirable in this context, to play a role as anyone other than J.K. Simmons. Norwegian actor Kristofer Hivyu as a burly Krampus whose showcase scene runs three times longer than necessary. A sentimental, unconvincing subplot in which Jack tries to reconnect with his son. Some half-baked “true meaning of Christmas” messaging tucked into the rudimentary fights and chases and wastes of innumerable CGI artists' time. Callum demonstrating his super powers to be turning tiny inanimate objects into fully sized functional ones, and also being able to shrink to the size of an elf. (Is he an elf, by the way? The film is oddly unspecific about what kind of non-human Callum is.) And, it should go without saying, the news that this mythology-heavy outing is merely the first installment in a purported Christmas-themed franchise being developed by Amazon MGM Studios that will likely be distracting/irritating us for millennia to come. If you think I'm a being a Scrooge now, wait'll you read me upon the release of Red One Two.
EMILIA PÉREZ
We still have a couple months – in this Midwestern locale, likely more than a couple – until all the 2024 Academy Awards hopefuls are successfully behind us. But I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that writer/director Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez (which recently landed on Netflix) will prove the most personally insufferable of the lot. The 72-year-old French auteur has delivered a host of critically acclaimed films that I haven't seen and at least three – A Prophet, Rust & Bone, and The Sisters Brothers – that I have, and I applaud his ambition in devising, here, a primarily Spanish-language musical crime thriller starring an openly trans actor as a secretly trans drug kingpin whose gender reassignment makes her a better person. Cookie-cutter formula this is most definitely not. You know what else it's not? An effective musical, an effective crime thriller, an effective exploration of the trans experience, and an effective look at marginalized figures no matter their careers, sexual identity, or ability to sing and dance. Given the film's laurels to date – a shared Best Actress prize, among four performers, at this year's Cannes Film Festival; a runner-up citation for the Toronto Film Festival's People's Choice Award – this opinion is clearly in the minority. But when I read Oscars bloggers suggesting that Emilia Pérez might be the movie to beat for the Best Picture prize, I kind of want to bash my head against a wall.
Prior to becoming the titular character, Emilia Pérez (Karla Soféa Gascón) was high-level cartel leader Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a murderous sociopath partly responsible for more than 100,000 missing Mexicans lost to the drug trade. Recruiting the aid of disillusioned lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña), Manitas arranges to fake his death. And years after numerous gender-affirming surgeries, the former warlord becomes revered social worker Emilia, whose newfound mission for good is to help families of the missing receive closure regarding their losses – specifically (through means never made clear) by alerting authorities to where, precisely, the bodies are buried. Disguising herself as Manitas' distant cousin whom the family has never met, Emilia also arranges for the return of her long-hidden wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two children, whom Emilia wants desperately to reconnect with. These are noble acts. As presented, they're also total bullshit. Because in order for the film's principal conceit to work, we have to believe that drug runner and killer Manitas only began to regret the atrocity of “his” doings by embracing her identity as a woman; her transition, it's implied, makes up for a lifetime of cruelty because Emilia would never have done what she did if only she'd had the courage to be her true self. Despite its Mrs. Doubtfire-esque narrative, Audiard's movie is noticeably short on jokes. But this one is a doozy.
Perhaps the film could've gotten away with its ludicrous premise (one that might prove abhorrently offensive to members of the trans community) if it in any way succeeded at one of the many genres being examined with purely tourist-level interest. Yet Audiard's work is wholly unsatisfying as a crime thriller, Manitas' drug-runner history left maddeningly vague and the final 20 minutes, barring a well-staged car accident, almost incalculably silly. It's a terrible domestic drama, the dealings between Emilia and Jessi and the couple's adorable urchins presented as mere telenovela clichés. Beyond a few sequences that directly involve the personal journey of Saldaña's lawyer, it's a crummy empowerment tale, with gender reassignment apparently the get-emotionally-rich-quick fix to decades of repellent behavior. (Please don't make the far right aware of this movie's existence, or we'll be barraged with countless commentaries about how hard-earned tax dollars are going toward turning male felons into female ones.) And as a musical, Emilia Pérez is an absolute dud: 16 original songs by French composers Clément Ducoi and Camille, and not a single one memorable, or even particularly musical.
Thankfully, I don't have many gripes with the performances, not counting their service to wholly lackluster material. Gascón, who can somewhat carry a tune, is given random moments of thoughtful melancholy – even though, strangely, she's a more arresting dramatic presence under pug-ugly Manitas prosthetics than she is after the new, improved Emelia makes her debut. Saldaña, who sings with more skill, has a few impressively forceful moments and does her best to sell the infrequent, chaotic dance numbers. Gomez, the one true chanteuse of the bunch, is traditionally engaging yet stuck with an impossible character who only behaves according to the whims of the plot's lunatic contrivances. And Adriana Paz, the fourth Cannes winner among the ladies, is the only one who comes close to a sustained portrayal as a not-at-all-bereaved widow and Emilia's eventual lover, making it all the more infuriating when the film forgets about her long before the end credits mercifully roll. Dull when it should've been riveting and emotionally empty when it should've been moving, Audiard's latest was, for me, a chore to get through. Of course, considering the laurels thus-far amassed, there's every chance that you'll be hearing lots more about Emilia Pérez in the months leading up to the March 2 Academy Awards. Know that amid all the applause the film's title will generate, there's at least one person out here who's respectfully yet resolutely sitting on his hands.
HOT FROSTY
Given the built-in roadblocks hindering mass appeal (Foreign language! Trans visibility! Musical!), it probably won't surprise you to hear that, since the film's release last Wednesday, Emilia Pérez hasn't found its way to Netflix's Top 10 Movies roster, and isn't likely to anytime soon. You know what is on the list, however, and has been safely ensconced in the number-one position since its Friday debut? Hot Frosty, in which Lacey Chabert's kindly young widow Kathy falls in love with a snowman (Schitt's Creek's hot veterinarian Dustin Milligan) after a magical scarf turns the formerly frozen hunk into a real live boy.
Listen, I'm not here to pee on anyone's parade. I know that scores of viewers adore these lightly comedic, purportedly romantic, Hallmark-style fantasies – Chabert has reportedly starred in 17 Christmas-themed examples over the years – that take place in Bedford Falls-adjacent small towns such as this movie's Hope Springs. I know the familiar cardboard stereotypes and minimal stakes and relentless twinkliness are perks, not bugs. And I know that we're not expected, or much invited, to ask fundamental questions invoking logic and common sense, even though I was dying to know who, exactly, built that buff snowman that resembled Michelangelo's David, or how he became a carpentry wizard through a few hours of TV viewing, or why the townsfolk agreed to the truth of this supernatural miracle by simply saying, “Hey – it's Christmas!” I just wish director Jerry Ciccoritti's holiday goof weren't so vanilla and so boring, because if any seasonal flick deserved a healthy dose of WTF?!? invention, it's this one.
Still, better to simply let the devoted have their fun and go with Kathy's sensible statement “I have so many questions and … they don't matter.” Chabert is sweet. The almost comically ripped Milligan plays goofiness and sentiment to the hilt. Joe Lo Truglio does his lovable-dipstick thing. And God bless Craig Robinson for showing up as Hot Frosty's requisite Christmas meanie Sheriff Hunter, an egomaniacal oaf who croons while playing his electric piano (just like on The Office!) and breaks the fourth wall (just like in Hot Tub Time Machine!) and reminds Hope Springs denizens that they haven't had a murder in the 10 years he's been on the job. “Actually,” a citizen clarifies, “we haven't had a murder in 100 years.” Robinson doesn't even pause before delivering the sheriff's retort: “You're welcome.”
