Released: November 21st, 2025
Watched: December 12th, 2025
'Rental Family', directed by Hikari and written by Hikari and Stephen Blahut, is a 2025 film where Brendan Fraser's "Philip Vandarploeug" is a struggling actor in Japan who is given an opportunity to work for a rental family company. While working for this company, Rental Family, Philip fills the roles in lives that people feel they are missing, and lets it get more personal than it should.
I think that 'Rental Family' is an all around okay movie. There are some genuinely good laughs and some genuinely touching moments, but they all exist in a movie that doesn't always seem to know what it wants to do with itself. Fraser puts on a good performance, as do Hira and Yamamoto, but there are just a few moments in the film where it loses me.
*Spoilers*
The way Fraser's character is convinced to join the Family Rental company is by Hira's character reminding him of a massive toothpaste ad Fraser had done in the past and how he was struggling to get consistent work in Japan. I cannot tell if this a Chekov's Gun for how "Mia", played by Shannon Gorman, discovers that her "dad" is a hired actor or that the writers just needed a way to make "Philip" choose a career he had some objections to.
I'm also not the biggest fan of how the tone shift is handled. "Philip's" biggest gripe with the job is that by acting so impersonally with their clients they are not actually helping anybody. However, the way that this is handled feels a little too close to "white guy goes into a different culture and tells them how weird they are and then they agree" territory. The climax of the movie is effectively "Philip" telling both of his coworkers how this job isn't actually helping anyone, him being put into jail for taking an old man with implied dementia to his dilapidated home town and letting him get hurt, then our main Japanese cast members briefly debating the morality of their work. They all still do rental family work at the end of the movie, but try to do it "more morally".
On a more positive note I do like how they handled Hira's "Shinji". There are a couple moments where we get to see Shinji come home to his family, mostly not too long after an uncomfortable situation with "Philip" happens. After our leads have the big fight about the morality of their work, 'Shinji" once again comes home to his family. However, this time it is revealed that both his wife and his son are rental family hires. I really liked this reveal, especially since it comes not too far off of "Philip" and "Aiko", played by Mari Yamamoto, having a conversation about what they would use their company's services for.
Overall, 'Rental Family' is a moving that I'd consider worth watching if you can catch it on streaming or otherwise in a way where you are not paying for it directly.
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