Rental Family stars Brendan Fraser as an American actor living in Japan who takes a job that sees him hired by everyday people to play key roles in their lives.James Lisle/Supplied
Rental Family
Written by Hikari and Stephen Blahut
Starring Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira and Shannon Mahina Gorman
Classification PG; 110 minutes
Opens in select theatres Nov. 21
It isn’t difficult to see why Brendan Fraser decided to choose the drama Rental Family as his follow-up to The Whale.
Whereas Darren Aronofsky’s 2022 character study offered Fraser a role so explicitly “big” in all manner of speaking – playing a 600-pound literature professor who is trapped in a cycle of self-destruction – that he was practically guaranteed an Oscar win, you need to follow such extremes with something far smaller, gentler. Rental Family certainly fits the bill, to an almost tragicomical degree – this is a movie so tiny and inoffensive that it immediately evaporates from memory.
The comeback story of Brendan Fraser, the humblest star in Hollywood
Set in Tokyo and its outlying suburbs, the film follows a lonely American actor with the curiously specific name of Phillip Vanderploeg (Fraser) as he struggles to book gigs. Although semi-proficient in Japanese, Phillip is mostly cast as the stock “evil American” in domestic film and television productions, the occasional zany toothpaste commercial breaking up the monotony. But Phillip’s career path changes one day when he connects with the operator of a local “rental family service” company – a real-life enterprise in Japan in which everyday people hire actors to portray their non-existent friends, family members or co-workers for social events such as weddings or funerals.
Soon, Phillip’s boss Shinji (Takehiro Hira) is sending the American – who, thanks to Fraser’s towering height and wide, goofy smile, sticks out like a sore thumb in Tokyo – to play two key roles. The first has Phillip playing a “journalist” supposedly compiling a biography of a once-famous movie star (Akira Emoto), while the second, far more sensitive assignment has him cast as the “dad” of a young Japanese-American girl (Shannon Mahina Gorman) whose mother needs a father figure around to ensure her daughter’s acceptance into a private school.
Both stories are designed to jerk tears and tug heartstrings, but the film’s mononymously named writer-director Hikari (best known for directing episodes of Netflix’s 2023 series Beef) cannot bring herself to go even an inch past base-level expectations. The stories unfold in exactly the way you’re imagining having just read the brief synopsis above, and any potential sense of cultural specificity is washed away by a directing style that feels motion-smoothed to minimize any flicker of visual impact. Even the bright, bustling, colourful imagery of Tokyo feels stitched together from stock-footage reels – it is almost an anti-advertisement for the city’s electrifying energy.
One of the roles Fraser’s character takes on is that of a father figure to a young Japanese-American girl, played by Shannon Mahina Gorman.James Lisle/Supplied
Just like any good employee of a rental-family company, the film’s cast do their absolute best with a challenging assignment. The young Mahina Gorman is an especially perceptive performer, even when her character is being squeezed into several confusing corners. And there are few other performers who could approach Phillip with the sincerity necessary than Fraser.
The star’s eager-to-please persona and overgrown puppy-dog physicality keeps the film from falling into complete shtick. It is all the more remarkable a feat given that Phillip is a complete cipher of a character. All we ever learn about him is what the first few minutes of Hikari’s script offers – he’s American, he’s lonely, he’s a decent actor. Why is he in Japan? Did he have a career back in America? Has he ever been in love, or been loved? The film cannot be bothered to pose such queries, let alone answer them.
Back to the sea for Fraser, then, with the hopes of catching another whale.