RENTAL FAMILY – Review

There is unexpected depth in RENTAL FAMILY, a comedy/drama starring Brendan Fraser as an American actor living in Tokyo who takes a job with an agency that supplies actors to play a part in people’s lives. There are sweet moments but nothing saccharine in this a film that thoughtfully explores issues about identity, role-playing and self-deceit as well as human connections.

Odd as it seems, such rental agencies really do exist in Japan. Brendan Fraser gives a touching performance in RENTAL FAMILY, which is partly in English and partly Japanese with subtitles, as an American actor who has been living in Tokyo for seven years but still feels like an outsider. With work becoming sparse, the out-of-work American actor takes a one-time job with a company that provides its customers with people to play roles in their lives, such as a mourner at a funeral, or even impersonate someone in their lives. The company asks him to stay one but the actor is hesitant at first. He is persuaded to take the job when the business owner points out it is still acting, like improv, and that the service is helping people.

That is not always true, as the American finds out. Some of the assignments are short-term, but others are longer. In one such case, a single mother hires the actor to impersonate the American father her young daughter never met, in order to help her gifted daughter get into an exclusive school. In another, the daughter of an older Japanese movie star, who hires the American to play a journalist who has come to interview the once-famous, aged actor, who fears he has been forgotten. The one rule in the work is not to get too involved, which Fraser’s big-hearted character struggles with that at times. This charming, beautifully-shot drama, partly in English and partly in Japanese with subtitles, is mostly sweet, warm and sometimes even comic, but it also has some surprising, and even unsettling, food-for-thought moments, as well as offering reflections on identity, human connections and role-playing in our own lives.

While there is plenty of humor, there is also a poignancy to RENTAL FAMILY, as it explores issues around role-playing in our lives and human connections, There is a sweetness to but it is naver cloying or false in tone, and always grounded in real human connections.

RENTAL FAMILY, partly in English and partly Japanese with English subtitles, opens in theaters on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025.

RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars