Rental Family: Brendan Fraser Finds His Way Home

Rating: 9/10 ⭐️

There's a particular kind of actor who stays with you from your teenage years, not because of the roles they played but because of how those roles made you feel. For me, Brendan Fraser is that actor. The Mummy and The Mummy Returns weren't just adventure films, they were a certain kind of joy, a big, warm, larger-than-life presence on screen that felt genuinely rare. So when Fraser quietly disappeared from movies for years, it was one of those things that sat at the back of your mind without you quite realizing it. His return through Doom Patrol and then the extraordinary work in The Whale, which brought him a well-deserved Oscar, felt like a correction of something that had been wrong for too long. He's back, and Rental Family is proof that this time, he's here to stay.

The film is set in Tokyo, which was another reason I was drawn to it. Japan holds a special place for me. My sister lives there, and my first trip abroad was to that country. There is a quiet beauty to Japan that is genuinely difficult to put into words, a kind of grace in how the culture carries itself, and the film captures that beautifully. Director Hikari shoots Tokyo in bright daylight rather than the usual neon-soaked nighttime imagery, and the result feels like the Japan I actually remember visiting.

Fraser plays Phillip Vanderploeg, an American actor who moved to Japan seven years ago after landing a toothpaste commercial, and has been scraping by ever since. The premise kicks in when his agent lands him an odd gig: dress nicely, show up, and play the "sad American" at a funeral. Except the man in the coffin is still very much alive, just wanting to know how he'd be mourned before it's too late. That strange, tender detail tells you everything about the kind of film this is. From there, Phillip stumbles into the rental family industry, a real thing in Japan where actors are hired to fill the gaps in people's lives: a groom for a wedding, a journalist interviewing a legendary actor with dementia, a father helping a young girl get into a prestigious school. The roles are deceptions, but the need behind each of them is completely real.

What the film understands, and what Fraser communicates without ever overplaying it, is that Phillip isn't sad. He's lonely. He's been in Tokyo long enough to call it home but is still unmistakably Gaijin, a foreigner who can never fully belong. He spends his evenings looking out of his apartment window. The roles he takes on, ironically, are the first places where he truly connects. And as he starts genuinely caring about the people he's supposed to be performing for, something shifts, in him and in them.

This is a feel-good movie, but it earns it. It doesn't shy away from the moral messiness of the premise, of lying to people who trust you, of a child who doesn't know the father figure in her life is an actor. But it holds all of that complexity while still believing, quietly and without sentimentality, that people are capable of genuine change and connection. I came out of it feeling lighter than I went in, and sometimes that's exactly what you need. 9/10.