Most people would find "A Real Pain" to be a bit of an oddball movie that isn’t easily pigeonholed into your typical film categories. It also doesn’t readily sit side-by-side with the typical high-budget blockbuster and very much beats to its drum, making it the sort of material you’d find coming from Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Jesse Eisenberg does triple duty on this film, having directed and written it aside from starring. He takes a bit of a back seat to Keiran Culkin, who steals the show. This is not to say that Eisenberg doesn’t deliver a good performance, but he does. This is possibly Eisenberg at his most subdued. His usual manic, fast-talking, self-confident self that we saw in movies like The Social Network and Now You See Me is replaced with a more soft-spoken, mousy character, leaving most of the witty, acerbic talk to his co-star.

Eisenberg and Culkin play cousins of Polish descent living in America. When their beloved Polish grandmother passed away; she bequeathed them a sizable amount of money for them to travel to Poland and reconnect with their roots.

The two sign up for a heritage tour where they travel with a varied bunch of people, each with their personal histories and reasons for joining.

On the surface it is a buddy road trip movie, albeit a seriously dysfunctional one. The dynamic is at once funny, sad and incredibly annoying. And this in part at least, gives the film its title. As much as the two cousins love one another, each in their way, they can see the other as a real pain.

The humor is deadpan, which works with the intentionally monotonous way the whole film was shot. There is no drive to the narrative. There’s no deadline to meet, no villain to overcome or damsel in distress to rescue before it's too late. You, as a viewer, simply accompany the jolly band of tourists as they go from sightseeing.

However, as the movie progresses, its focus is broadened, and deeper themes are tackled. With every stop on the tour you peel back another layer of interest and understanding, much of which has to do with pain.

The cousins, individually and as relations, have pain that they have to deal with. There is also generational pain inherited from their grandmother who fled from the holocaust. All the other members of the tour, including the guide, are harbouring some trauma or unresolved issue that is slowly eating at them.

The focus of the movie then shifts to dealing with the pain you have, or at the very least acknowledging that it exists, and it does so with remarkable tact and respect.

The film is meaningful for Eisenberg, who is of Polish descent. Still, the movie does not offer universal solutions to healing from trauma, and neither should be expected.

Perhaps acknowledging that the pain exists and sharing it makes it easier to process is enough for now. "A Real Pain" is out exclusively in Ayala theaters.