Rental Family Review: Brendan Fraser is great in this sweet comedy-drama
PLOT: A lonely American actor (Brendan Fraser) living in Japan gets an unusual job. He’s hired by a company that provides “rental families” where employees act as stand-ins for missing or non-existent family members.
REVIEW: As gloomy as cinema’s overall forecast has become over the last few years, one of the good things that actually happened was that Brendan Fraser was able to launch a much-deserved, long overdue comeback. Rental Family is a nice change of pace from his more recent, dark turns, with it the kind of gentle, character-driven serio-comedy that was his forte in his heyday.
A sweet-natured movie, Fraser plays an American expatriate living in Japan, where he’s achieved a modicum of fame because he once starred in a popular toothpaste commercial. Ten years later, the only roles he can get are as “sad American” in background spots. However, his nationality makes him a niche player for a company called “Rental Family”, run by Takehiro Hira’s Shinji, who supplies stand-ins to temporarily fill roles in people’s lives. Soon, Fraser’s Phillip becomes overwhelmingly popular, but soon he begins to struggle with real feelings of empathy and affection for his clients, who he begins to fear he’s exploiting.
It’s a gentle vehicle for Fraser, who’s expertly cast. With his big eyes and friendly face, Fraser radiates kindness, and it’s a treat to see him gently integrate himself into people’s lives. He develops a particular affection for two clients, one being a young girl named Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman) for whom he poses as her father at the behest of her mother, mainly to fill in for the absent father at school events. Another is Akira Emoto’s Kikuo, a retired actor. Phillip is hired by his children to pose as an interviewer interested in his career, as the old man believes he’s been forgotten.
While both plots sound cliché and could lend themselves to a sappy melodrama, writer-director Hikari (who directed several episodes of Netflix’s Beef) never has any of the storylines go exactly the way you think they will. In fact, the movie is less interested in the individual plots than it is in what role “family” actually plays, and how—in some cases—a surrogate or even imaginary family can be important in its own way, even if it is just ephemeral. It also takes an intriguing look at Japan’s stance on mental health issues. As Hira’s Shinji tells Phillip, businesses like theirs fill a need, as seeking mental health services is still stigmatized, and a person is more likely to open up about their issues with a stranger rather than a psychiatrist. At the same time, Phillip’s own loneliness as both a middle-aged man without a family and a “Gai-jin” (foreigner) in Japan is explored, with him seeking his own professional solution to his loneliness, albeit in his case with a friendly prostitute.
While probably too low-key and minor to make a big impact at the box office or with critics, Rental Family is still a lovely movie, with Fraser given a nice showcase as his career once again starts to lift off. It’s a quirky comedy-drama, but it also provides interesting insight into how loneliness isn’t exclusive to any particular culture, and that at the end of the day people the world over likely crave the same things—friendship and family.
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