Rental Family – Film Review

Hikari’s Rental Family is a film that sneaks up on you. It begins with a premise that feels almost whimsical—a lonely American actor in Tokyo, adrift in a career that has stalled and a life that feels smaller by the day, signs up to work for a “rental family” agency. But what unfolds is far more textured and emotionally resonant than its quirky logline suggests. With a deft mix of comedy, melancholy, and warmth, Hikari and co-writer Stephen Blahut craft a story about identity, performance, and the unexpected places we find belonging. Anchored by a beautifully vulnerable performance from Brendan Fraser, the film becomes a deeply human meditation on the roles we assume, the ones imposed upon us, and the ones we wish we could play for real.

Phillip Vandarploeug (Fraser) is introduced not as a man dramatically broken, but one quietly displaced. Hikari’s direction allows his loneliness to simmer beneath the surface: his attempts at Japanese audition scripts feel half-hearted, his walk through crowded Tokyo streets leaves him invisible, and his tiny apartment is decorated less by intention and more by accumulation. He’s not collapsing, just drifting. When he stumbles upon Shinji’s (Takehiro Hira) rental family agency, it feels less like a dramatic turning point and more like the next odd job of a life full of them. The understatedness of this introduction becomes one of the film’s strengths—it pays attention to emotional nuance and lets character change unfold gradually, observation by observation.

Shinji, played with quiet command by Hira, runs the rental family service with the precision of a theatre director and the empathy of a social worker. He offers roles that range from wedding guests to estranged sons to comforting strangers. The business, as depicted here, is neither exploitative nor sentimentalized. Hikari presents it as an extension of a culture that values harmony and emotional privacy—sometimes too much. Through Phillip’s outsider perspective, the film gently examines the contradictions inherent in a job that asks you to be lovable on command.

As Phillip begins taking assignments, the comedy arises not from fish-out-of-water antics but from the awkward sincerity of a man trying to do right in situations he barely understands. Brendan Fraser thrives in this tonal space. Fresh off his career renaissance, he brings a blend of comedic timing and emotional fragility that is as compelling as anything he has done in years. He knows when to lean into Phillip’s earnestness and when to let silence carry the moment. His interactions with clients often begin funny but land somewhere much deeper.

One of the film’s most affecting threads involves Mia Kawasaki, played by Shannon Mahina Gorman in an impressive, emotionally open performance. Mia is a young girl dealing with the absence of a stable father figure, and her mother (Shino Shinozaki) hires Phillip to fill that role during moments when Mia feels most adrift. As their bond grows, the script calls for something gentler: a connection that is undeniably artificial in origin yet undeniably real in its emotional outcome.

Hikari handles these scenes with exceptional restraint. Rather than linger on melodramatic beats, the film focuses on the small gestures that shape trust—helping with homework, sharing stories on a park bench, the nervous smile of a child trying to believe in something good. Fraser and Gorman share a chemistry that feels entirely organic, and their scenes become the quiet heart of the movie. These moments illustrate the central tension of Phillip’s journey: he is being paid to act like someone who matters, but for perhaps the first time in years, he actually does.

Complementing this arc is Phillip’s relationship with Kikuo Hasegawa, played by the excellent Akira Emoto. Kikuo is a retired actor, and his reasons for hiring a rental companion are layered with regret and nostalgia. Emoto brings a poignancy to the role that elevates every shared scene. His conversations with Phillip—part mentorship, part confessional, part performance critique—become some of the film’s most resonant moments. For a story so concerned with the meaning of acting, it makes perfect sense that Kikuo becomes a mirror through which Phillip examines the choices he’s made and the dreams he abandoned.

Mari Yamamoto’s Aiko, an agency employee who guides Phillip through the intricacies of the job, offers a sharply observed contrast to the film’s more emotional characters. Yamamoto plays her with a grounded warmth, and her scenes with Fraser are laced with subtle humor and unspoken yearning. While the film never pushes their dynamic toward a conventional romantic arc, it allows their connection to grow through shared experience and mutual recognition. In a film about pretending, Aiko becomes one of the few people with whom Phillip never has to.

Rental Family is stunning without calling attention to itself. Hikari has a natural eye for framing Tokyo not as a neon spectacle but as a lived-in mosaic of quiet corners, overlooked streets, and intimate rooms. Cinematographer Stephen Blahut brings soft lighting and gentle palette shifts that reinforce Phillip’s emotional progression. The film avoids the clichés of foreigner-in-Japan narratives, instead offering a perspective that feels informed, respectful, and observational rather than exoticized.

The screenplay moves with a steady rhythm, balancing humor with silence, introspection with interaction. Some viewers may find the pacing slow, but the film’s contemplative nature is intentional. It allows the audience to sit with Phillip as he absorbs the nuances of each assignment, each client, each borrowed moment of belonging. The final act brings the emotional threads together without resorting to contrived twists or grand revelations. Instead, Hikari opts for a conclusion that is both realistic and quietly hopeful—one that acknowledges that healing does not always come in dramatic sweeps but in the faint, persistent movements toward connection.

If the film has a weakness, it’s that certain supporting characters could use more dimension. A few clients are introduced and discarded a bit too quickly, missing opportunities to deepen the exploration of the rental family concept. Yet this is a minor quibble in an otherwise thoughtfully structured narrative.

Rental Family succeeds because it understands the profound truth that sometimes the roles we pretend to play reveal the selves we have forgotten. Through Brendan Fraser’s deeply felt performance and Hikari’s delicate direction, the film becomes a moving portrait of loneliness, empathy, and the strange, beautiful ways people find each other. It’s a story about the families we’re born into, the families we create, and the families we stumble into by accident—but choose to stay with because something in them finally feels real.