Rental Family Review

“Crowd-pleaser” used to be a term of endearment. Now, it’s one that every cinema snob on Film Twitter views as a red flag. Rental Family is the very definition of a crowd-pleaser that’s likely to resonate with anyone looking to be put in an uplifting mood. That’s why most of us go to the movies, right? Sure, but there are plenty of cynics who will sit down with arms crossed and one eyebrow raised. While I walk a tightrope between optimism and pessimism, Rental Family caught me on a good day. The film is an undeniable charmer from director Hikari, who previously worked on the miniseries Beef. Ironically, that’s are far away from crowd-pleasing as you can get.

Brendan Fraser has come back in a big way since winning Best Actor for The Whale. There was a period, though, where many questioned if he’d ever rebound from multiple career setbacks. You get the sense that Fraser draws from a personal place in Rental Family, where he plays struggling actor Phillip. A tall American living in a cramped Japanese apartment, Phillip’s most prominent role was for a toothpaste commercial. That was several years ago. With fewer acting gigs coming his way, Phillip agrees to take a job with a rental family service.

Run by Takehiro Hira’s Shinji, the service pairs clients with actors, who are essentially enlisted to live a part. One day, Phillip might be asked to play a bride’s groom in a fake wedding. The next, he’ll play Dreamcast with a guy who needs a friend. Although Phillip finds the concept unusual, his closest relationship is with a sex worker. So, it’s not like the idea of paid companionship is entirely foreign to him. Mari Yamamoto plays a co-worker who reminds Phillip that he’s just performing and shouldn’t get too emotionally attached. In at least two cases, he can’t help himself.

Phillip is asked to play the father of a young girl named Mia, played by Shannon Mahina Gorman in what’s sure to go down as one of the year’s breakout performances. Refreshingly, Phillip doesn’t fall in love with Mia’s mom (Shino Shinozaki), who wants to keep things strictly professional. Phillip grows attached to Mia nonetheless. In a film like this, there’s bound to come a time when the truth must be confronted. Rental Family avoids falling into cheap clichés, though, creating believable characters who form genuine connections despite the unorthodox circumstances.

Phillip also grows fond of an aging actor named Kikuo (Akira Emoto), who looks to reclaim something he lost before his time is up. In Mia, Phillip finds the daughter he never had. In Kikuo, he develops the relationship he wishes he had with his father. While this ties the subplots together nicely, Rental Family can at times feel like two movies. If the entire movie focused on just one relationship, the pacing might’ve felt a little more even. Regardless, both storylines pull at the heartstrings without becoming overly sentimental. Rental Family might not be groundbreaking cinema, but it is a wonderful film. Just as Phillip is enlisted to bring strangers comfort, the film does its job and perhaps does more than what’s required of it.