From The Farewell to The Darjeeling Limited, there are plenty of great movies like to watch after enjoying Jesse Eisenberg’s acclaimed dramedy. A Real Pain is a deeply affecting blend of Holocaust drama and buddy comedy. The perfectly matched Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin lead the cast of A Real Pain as a hilarious odd couple who embark on a tour in Poland to honor their late grandmother. Eisenberg’s David is anxious, neurotic, and self-conscious, while Culkin’s Benji is laidback, outgoing, and says whatever is on his mind.

David and Benji are a joy to watch together. Eisenberg and Culkin share electric on-screen chemistry, and it’s both hysterical and heartwarming to watch these estranged cousins reconnect over the course of the film. After watching A Real Pain, now streaming on Hulu, there are a lot of similar movies to enjoy. There are other road movies about mismatched pairs, like Sideways and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and other character-driven two-handers that deal with the lingering trauma of the Holocaust, like Harold and Maude.

A Real Pain is Eisenberg’s second movie as a writer-director, and he brought the same seamless blend of comedy and drama to his 2022 debut feature, When You Finish Saving the World. Similar to A Real Pain, When You Finish Saving the World deals with strained family dynamics. Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard star as a mother and son who struggle to connect as the mother works with domestic abuse survivors and the son launches his folk music career.

Eisenberg’s first movie established his penchant for character-driven storytelling. His movies don’t have overly complicated plots with shocking twists and external conflicts, but the characters and their relationships are deeply complex, with plenty of internal conflict. When You Finish Saving the World was a promising debut that introduced the now-Oscar-nominated filmmaking voice behind A Real Pain.

Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited has a remarkably similar story to A Real Pain. Where A Real Pain revolves around two cousins on a soul-searching journey across Poland, The Darjeeling Limited revolves around three brothers on a soul-searching journey across India. Where A Real Pain digs into the unresolved grief over a grandmother’s death, The Darjeeling Limited digs into the unresolved grief over a father’s death. The tone is very similar, too; they’re lighthearted comedies that can switch to harrowing tragedy at the drop of a dime.

Although it received mixed reviews upon its release, The Darjeeling Limited has since been reappraised as arguably Anderson’s most underrated film. The bonds between the estranged brothers are just as authentic and believable as the bond between the estranged cousins in A Real Pain. Anderson captures the beauty of India just as effectively as Eisenberg does with Poland.

A Real Pain wasn’t the only sobering family drama to receive critical acclaim in 2024; Azazel Jacobs’ His Three Daughters was similarly met with universal praise and awards buzz. Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen star as three estranged sisters who reunite under the same roof when their father falls ill. As they’re forced to share an apartment and reckon with their dad’s mortality, their tensions quickly bubble to the surface.

Coon, Lyonne, and Olsen’s on-screen dynamic as sisters is just as authentic and believable as Eisenberg and Culkin’s relationship as cousins in A Real Pain. The lifelong bonds shine through, with all the familiar foibles and relatable resentments. Much like A Real Pain, His Three Daughters is so dialogue-driven and visually unflashy in its filmmaking that it works almost like a stage play.

Although she never actually appears on-screen, one of the most important characters in A Real Pain is Grandma Dory. Before the events of the film, she passed away and left David and Benji enough money to visit her hometown in Poland. The trip is what brings them back together and facilitates the story. Another touching movie about losing a beloved grandmother is Lulu Wang’s The Farewell.

Awkwafina stars as a young woman whose grandmother is diagnosed with a terminal illness and only has a short time left to live. Instead of telling her about the disease, the family schedules a wedding to allow everyone to see their grandma one last time before she dies. Awkwafina and Zhao Shu-zhen share a beautiful on-screen dynamic as granddaughter and grandmother, and the film’s exploration of loss is just as profound as A Real Pain.

Eisenberg first broke out as an actor with his leading role as Walt Berkman in Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age dramedy The Squid and the Whale. The Squid and the Whale chronicles an upper-class New York divorce from the perspective of the couple’s two sons, aged 16 and 12. Eisenberg plays the teenage angst perfectly; he keeps Walt relatably awkward through all his troubled interactions, and he doesn’t shy away from the unlikable qualities that make the character feel like a real human being.

Baumbach has clearly had an influence on Eisenberg as a director. The actor’s own filmmaking shares Baumbach’s signature combination of acerbic wit, sobering melancholy, and brutal honesty. In capturing both ends of the emotional spectrum, Baumbach and Eisenberg reflect the messiness of real life, and find the surprising profundity in everyday mundanity.

At its core, A Real Pain is a story about two guys embarking on a trip and facing all the issues holding them back in life. Alexander Payne told a similar story in Sideways. Thomas Haden Church plays groom-to-be Jack and Paul Giamatti plays his best man, Miles. For an unconventional bachelor party, they spend a few days driving through California’s wine country. Miles is still hung up on his ex-wife and Jack is determined to cheat on his fiancée as much as possible.

The genius of the movie’s comedy is that, while it sounds like a classy version of The Hangover on paper, it’s actually even more depraved than The Hangover in execution. It has car crashes, downed spit buckets, and beatings by angry husbands. But it’s also every bit the emotional male-bonding drama that A Real Pain is.

Eisenberg’s screenplay for A Real Pain is a two-hander contrasting one character’s cynicism with another character’s optimism as they confront the horrors of the Holocaust. Hal Ashby explored similar themes and dynamics in his morbid romantic comedy Harold and Maude. Bud Cort plays Harold, a nihilistic young man whose obsession with death prevents him from enjoying life, while Ruth Gordon plays Maude, a 79-year-old woman whose obsession with death inspires her to live life to the fullest.

The six-decade age gap made Harold and Maude’s love story pretty controversial, but Cort and Gordon share spectacular chemistry, and the movie has deeper points to make. As a Holocaust survivor, Maude lived through the absolute worst that life has to offer and came out the other side with a zest for life. Her love inspires Harold to feel the same way.

A Real Pain isn’t the first two-hander to star Eisenberg as the foil opposite an eccentric scene partner. In The End of the Tour, Eisenberg plays Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky, who joins David Foster Wallace (played by Jason Segel) on the last leg of the book tour for Infinite Jest in order to write an intimate profile on him. With its focus on conversation and human connection, The End of the Tour plays like a two-man play.

Much like A Real Pain, The End of the Tour is a bromantic road movie. The characters connect on a deep emotional level and gradually grow closer, but there’s also a lot of friction and tension between them — especially when Lipsky asks Wallace a question that’s a little too probing. The End of the Tour is a touching exploration of loneliness and male bonding.

A Real Pain’s blend of road movie and buddy comedy is reminiscent of John Hughes’ Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Dave and Benji’s odd-couple relationship is almost identical to the dynamic between Steve Martin’s Neal Page and John Candy’s Del Griffith in this beloved holiday classic. When his flight is canceled, Neal reluctantly teams up with Del — a friendly stranger — for a disastrous road trip across America in order to get home to his family in time for Thanksgiving.

Neal, like Dave, is uptight, neurotic, unsociable, and easily irritated. Del, like Benji, is easygoing, outspoken, and quickly makes friends with everyone he meets. In both stories, over the course of their journey, the two characters grow closer together and bring out different sides of each other. Like A Real Pain, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a fun comedic caper that switches to heartbreaking drama at the drop of a hat.

The most endearing thing about A Real Pain is its bittersweet tone. It has a huge heart, capturing the lifelong love and friendship between its lead characters, but it also takes plenty of sad turns to remind the audience it’s not all roses. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine shares that tone. A dysfunctional family embarks on a cross-country road trip to get seven-year-old Olive to a child beauty pageant.

Like , Little Miss Sunshine has a star-studded ensemble full of rich, three-dimensional characters: Greg Kinnear as the frustrated father, Toni Collette as the long-suffering mother, Steve Carell as the depressed uncle, Paul Dano as the angsty older brother, Alan Arkin as the hilariously grumpy grandpa, and Abigail Breslin as Olive herself. By the end of their journey, everyone in the family is vicariously living through Olive. Their own dreams have all been squandered, but they can still make hers come true.