For a long time now there's been a common complaint that the Academy Awards are increasingly out of touch with ordinary moviegoers. The Acadmey itself attempted a ham-fisted fix to the problem by introducing the Most Popular Film category, one they backtracked on as quickly as they have any of their dumb attempts to stay relevant over the last decade or so.

But every time the Oscars rolls around there's comment from think pieces, late night comedians and cineastes alike that even though Nomadland, CODA, Anora, Moonlight etc were critically lauded, who the hell went to see them?

I was reminded of all that while watching A Real Pain, which blagged costar Keiran Culkin an Oscar for best supporting actor.

There have been several instances where awards regonition has been bestowed on a performer simply because of their presence in something everyone says is so great rather than anything they do in the film. The same thing happened with Patricia Arquette in Boyhood, during which I spent the entire time waiting for searing emotion that never emerged.

Is Culkin's character here a million miles from the comic relief in countless teen or stoner comedies, and does he do anything vastly different? Maybe he gets real in a couple of scenes, but that was more to do with the script than either he or costar/director Jesse Eisenberg.

All of which seems to say I didn't like this film at all, which isn't the case. It was just never more than fine.

The script (also by Eisenberg) as well as the title is drawing a parallel, and that's the only clever part of the movie. The real pain is both David's (Eisenberg) ne'er-do-well cousin Banji (Culkin), with whom he travels to Poland on a pilgrimage in honour of their late grandmother and the spectre of the Holocaust that still casts a shadow over the country and David and Benji's family history.

The pair seems to have once been close but David's grown up and Benji is still a slacker, causing them to drift apart and feel old resentments despite how close they are.

Once in Warsaw they join a tour group populated with a handful of other quite well developed characters and the intelligent and slightly fusty but self aware tour guide.

The group stops at various points, all of them bouncing and at times careening off each other, all the while with Benji and David's old tensions threatening to boil over. Two such set pieces are when Benji sets against their tour guide (very unfairly, it has to be said) and another when David tries to explain their complicated history to the rest of the group over dinner one night.

The trip goes on, the boys leave it behind to visit their grandmother's house before flying home, and sure there are a few moments of high emotion and authentic honesty, I just didn't think they (along with several others during conversations with the rest of the tour group) amounted to much or told much of a story apart from two guys walking across Europe.

It's honest, well acted, written and directed, it just kind of... sits there.