Rental Family
Review: Starring Brendan Fraser as a struggling American actor living in Japan, this movie is one of my biggest surprises of 2025. I was not expecting it to be as brilliant as it was. The film received a lot of praise, but I still was stunned by how good it was. Fraser’s character, Phillip, is hired by a rental family agency, where he fills hired roles for strangers. A Japanese production that’s partially in Japanese, but mostly in English, the film is a really easy watch for someone who may want to start immersing in non-American films but isn’t sure what to start with. We get fully immersed in Japanese culture (which is really cool in itself) through the extremely relatable eyes of an American who doesn’t get it. The film features good performances across the board, and I think this is Fraser’s career performance. I think ‘The Whale’ sucked, but I’m glad it exists and gave Fraser the career resurgence that led to this film. The film stars good performances from Takehiro Hira as Shinji, the owner of the agency, Mari Yamamoto as Aiko, an employee of the agency, and Shino Shinozaki as Hitomi, the mother of Mia. Something that was really well done in the film was that there were no one note characters. All the featured cast went through an arc and had layers to their characters, not just existing in Phillip’s story, but having their own stories as well. Aside from Fraser, the best performances in the film come from Shannon Mahina Gorman and Akira Emoto, two clients who have Phillip hired into their lives, unknowingly to them. Gorman plays Mia, a young girl without a father, when Phillip is hired to fill that role for her. The two form a genuine connection, helping both of them in ways they didn’t know they needed. Emoto plays Kikuo, an aged retired actor who thinks he is being forgotten, so his daughter hires Phillip to play a journalist writing a piece on him. Same as with Mia, the two genuinely connect in a way they both needed. The film is really sweet and made me cry several times (a lot of the themes of the film show the important of fatherhood, or parenthood in general, and stuff like that gets me even more now that I’m a dad). It really shows how much your life can improve when you’re doing things for others and how genuine human connection can revitalize someone’s life.
High: The film had a cool story and good performances. It was well written. It was both funny and dramatic, with the five other people in my theater laughing, gasping, and ‘aw-ing’ at the exact right times. I expected a lot of those things. What I didn’t expect was how visually stunning this movie was going to be. There were several shots throughout the film that made me audibly say ‘Wow!’ and made me glad I went to see it on the big screen. There were some really clever zooms and a lot of cool shots looking into and out of windows from various POVs. The whole scene in the art museum also looked really good and the emotions the characters felt throughout the film was brilliantly highlighted by the score. While the performers in this film gave award worthy performances, the efforts of the director, Hikari, the cinematographer, Takurô Ishizaka, the editors, Alan Baumgarten & Thomas A. Krueger, and the composers, Jónsi & Alex Somers, should not be overlooked. A massive team effort on this film.
Low: No notes!
Rating: 9.5/10
