A Real Pain

Given this movie received some prestigious award I half expected something in the league of Everything Is Illuminated. After all, the premise is similar. However, while Everything is moving, funny, deep, Real Pain left me indifferent, humor was not funny, story was pedestrian, personalities were exaggerated. Plus, where was the ending?

The only funny part was that in the movie participants of a Jewish history tour rightly complain they do not meet any actual Polish people. However, screenwriters fall into the same trap. We do not see any Polish people, even the tour guide is for some reason British. More, there are no people anywhere. Is Majdanek Camp Museum always empty? There are no pedestrians in Warsaw? It leaves the viewer with an eerie feeling of detachment from reality.

I wish somebody could explain to me what was the point of the movie. That two cousins close as youngsters grow apart and and in adulthood have little in common short of fragmented memories of their grandmother? Is it supposed to be a novel idea?

In short, a lost opportunity.