Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 TIFF coverage. Rental Family opens in theaters on November 21.
There is a moment early in Hikari’s Rental Family that promises a much darker, more unsettling film. Brendan Fraser, a likable Oscar winner for Darren Aronofsky’s quite unlikable The Whale, plays a struggling actor in Tokyo named Philip. He is anxious to book any gig he can, and with good reason: in the film’s opening we watch him on a failed audition and get the sense that this is a common occurrence. When his agent offers one (it pays well!) that requires a black suit, Philip is happy to oblige. What he finds upon arriving is, well, startling. It is, as he puts it, “fake”––a make-believe funeral for a very-much-living individual who rises from his coffin to watch admiringly as warm words are shared. A gig’s a gig, right?
That moment comes after the so-called funeral has finished. Philip re-enters the room, approaches the coffin, and lies in it, closing his eyes. Psychologically, it’s a fascinating move. What does this mean for Philip, how he views the value of his own life and career as a performer? These are delicate questions, and they won’t be answered in Rental Family. Which is fine. Quite frankly, there’s no reason to believe a much darker version of Rental Family would be a better version of Rental Family.
The one we do have is sweet, eminently watchable, and quite unextraordinary. Hikari, director of 2019’s 37 Seconds and several episodes of the Netflix drama Beef, has fashioned an old-school fish-out-of-water crowd-pleaser, one rightfully banking on the performance of its star and the strangeness of its premise. There are, in fact, companies in Japan that offer rental services where surrogates play the parts of mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, etc. And that means there must be willing participants.
It’s easy to see why a “big American” like Philip could kill (so to speak) as a human rental. Just like the actor who plays him, Philip is something of a gentle giant, a large figure with a disarmingly goofy grin. He is a character with little personality of his own; why not hire him to play, for example, the husband for a woman who wishes to assuage her family and then marry her girlfriend? Other roles for Philip include a journalist interviewing a faded Japanese actor for a non-existent profile and the video game playmate of a sad-eyed adult.
The most compelling role Philip plays in Rental Family is the father of a young girl who needs two parents in order to be accepted into a prestigious school. The young girl is Mia, beautifully played by young Shannon Mahina Gorman as a child who longs to connect with a long-absent parent. Admittedly, this plotline offers no surprises; there are no surprises in Rental Family, period. (Hikari co-wrote the sturdy but predictable screenplay with Stephen Blahut.) Thanks to Fraser and Gorman, however, it’s impossible not to be moved by the bond that develops between Philip and Mia. The other story threads cannot compete; interest wanes when “father” and “daughter” are not paired onscreen.
Rental Family is aided by actors Takehiro Hira (as the owner of the agency) and Mari Yamamoto (as a fellow rental actor). Make no mistake, though: this is Fraser’s show, and he excels. Hikari seems to understand the actor has a physicality that is genuinely endearing. It’s no surprise that she concludes the film on Fraser’s smiling visage. The film also features a lovely score from Jónsi and Alex Somers, and deserves bonus points for its use of David Byrne’s “Glass, Concrete & Stone.”
Rental Family could have gone deeper, darker, and more boldly into the oddities of the human rental market. But that would be a different film. It seems silly to come down too hard on this good-natured comedy-drama––especially for offering a much more impressive performance than the one that earned Fraser an Oscar.
Rental Family premiered at TIFF 2025 and opens in theaters on November 21.
The post Rental Family Review: Brendan Fraser Shines in Sweet, Slight Drama first appeared on The Film Stage.
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