{"id":140094,"date":"2025-11-17T21:24:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/140094\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T21:24:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:24:06","slug":"rental-family-review-schmaltz-for-sale-cheap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/140094\/","title":{"rendered":"Rental Family review: Schmaltz for sale, cheap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan Fraser is like a hug in human form in Rental Family, a film determined to provide no small amount of big feelings. In his early stardom, the 56-year-old actor exuded a boisterous, goofy innocence, suggesting the energy of a big kid who somehow was old enough to drink. As Fraser moved into middle age, his face and body filled out, but that delicate, childlike quality held firm. In The Whale<\/a>, which won him an Oscar<\/a> and cemented his comeback, he played someone with a good heart who was fundamentally broken, and Fraser made the character\u2019s anguish palpable. As he\u2019s gotten older, he\u2019s tapped into a touching fragility on the other side of that immaturity, seemingly drawn to portraying people for whom life is almost too much to bear. Rental Family is ideally suited to his talents\u2014it\u2019s a pity that it reveals the limitations of his unabashed humanism.<\/p>\n

Directed and co-written by Japanese filmmaker Hikari, the tearjerking drama takes place in Tokyo, where American actor Phillip (Fraser) has lived for seven years. He has struggled landing steady gigs, until one day he accidentally stumbles into an event organized by a \u201crent-a-family\u201d company, one of many in Japan. The company\u2019s owner Shinji (Takehiro Hira) explains the concept: Customers hire his employees to serve as surrogate loved ones for situations like weddings or funerals. It\u2019s a service that fends off loneliness in a Japanese culture in which people are leery of talking about their problems to a therapist. Phillip is bewildered and intrigued, and the money is good, so he comes on board. It\u2019s just another form of acting, right?<\/p>\n

After running through several of Phillip\u2019s early adventures in the job, Rental Family focuses on two clients. In one assignment, he poses as the long-lost father of a girl named Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), whose single mother (Shino Shinozaki) needs Phillip to pretend to be her husband so that Mia can get into an elite private school. Soon, though, Mia becomes attached to Phillip, eagerly believing her mother\u2019s lie that he is her father. Phillip\u2019s other major client is Kikuo (Akira Emoto), an aging actor who fears that he has been forgotten\u2014Phillip has been hired by Kikuo\u2019s daughter to pose as a journalist writing a story about his illustrious career. Inevitably, Phillip bonds with Kikuo, affected by the older man\u2019s wise perspective on life, just as Alzheimer\u2019s seems to be taking hold.<\/p>\n

Previous films have similarly wrestled with our need for connection\u2014and the sometimes surreal lengths we\u2019ll go to maintain those relationships. Marjorie Prime<\/a> imagined a future in which a computer program can replicate the dearly departed. Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 Alps took a dark look at a foursome who offers to stand in for dead family members so that the grieving can process the loss through role-playing. Tender and sentimental, Rental Family possesses none of those earlier films\u2019 sting, shying away from the subject matter\u2019s potentially fascinating psychological depths. Hikari wants to reassure her audience, not leave them troubled. Fraser is all too willing to oblige.<\/p>\n

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In Rental Family\u2018s early stages, Fraser adeptly captures Phillip\u2019s melancholy and alienation. The character has lived long enough in Japan to learn the language and customs, but Fraser\u2019s sad eyes and plastered-on smile suggest a man who still feels marooned. (In due course, we\u2019ll hear more of Phillip\u2019s backstory, understanding why exactly he\u2019s in Tokyo.) Fraser\u2019s gentle-giant demeanor works well opposite the young Mia and the elderly Kikuo, characters at the extreme spectrums of life, each helpless in their own way. Phillip may have initial misgivings about the job\u2014he\u2019s concerned about engaging in an elaborate deception\u2014but the more time he spends with his clients, the murkier the moral lines get. Deep down, he cares about Mia and Kikuo, so maybe a (big) white lie isn\u2019t the worst thing if it ultimately makes them happy.<\/p>\n

If Hikari had a slightly more jaundiced view of human nature, Rental Family might not have become so cloying. But because Fraser projects such uncynical decency\u2014and because the film is very clear in its (negative) opinions about rent-a-family services\u2014it becomes a foregone conclusion that all the correct lessons will be learned and all the right messages will be communicated. Conveniently, Phillip will find himself working with two too-perfect clients who make him question the ethics of what he\u2019s doing; just as conveniently, Shinji will at that moment prove to be utterly heartless. It\u2019s just a job, Shinji informs him, you\u2019ll get used to it. But, of course, Rental Family wants us to know that Shinji is Wrong and Phillip is Right, and so the film\u2019s self-righteousness precludes any sense of nuance or inquisitiveness. Hikari goes to the trouble of introducing this company just so she can insist that it\u2019s terrible\u2014except, naturally, when it helps Phillip grow as a person.<\/p>\n

As heartfelt as Rental Family tries to be, there\u2019s a disingenuousness about its intentions that\u2019s nearly as deceitful as the lies Phillip tells Mia and Kikuo in order to earn their trust. At a time when loneliness seems endemic\u2014not just in Japan, but everywhere\u2014and people are turning to A.I. and the internet to find someone, anyone, who will talk to them, it\u2019s a little smug to build an entire movie out of the thesis that there\u2019s no substitute for connecting with other people in real life. It\u2019s a patronizing assertion that\u2019s proving harder and harder to achieve in our technology-driven society.<\/p>\n

Much of Rental Family\u2018s thematic weight is carried by Fraser, who gives a performance as blandly warm-and-fuzzy as the movie surrounding him. His disarming sincerity dooms a film that desperately needs a whiff of the absurd or the disturbing to keep it honest. Fraser walks through this aggressively sappy drama with the aura of simple goodness that has served him well. But such concentrated radiance starts to feel like a denial of the painful reality Rental Family ignores. The movie wants to give you a hug, but you may be tempted to slap it across the face.<\/p>\n

Director: Hikari
Writers: Hikari, Stephen Blahut
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Release Date: November 21, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brendan Fraser is like a hug in human form in Rental Family, a film determined to provide no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-140094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}