"Rental Family" - Brendan Fraser's Wonderful Holiday Dramedy

There’s been quite a bit of warranted chatter about whether the 2020's have contributed a net positive or a net negative to the film industry. We could probably have that conversation all day until the end of time, and still never find a concrete answer. But, there does seem to be at least one unifying truth to the positive side: the Brendan Fraser renaissance. Since his powerhouse, Oscar-winning performance in the Darren Aronofsky's The Whale, he has been full speed ahead once more as an actor, as well as branching into more producing roles as well. His latest from Japanese filmmaker, Hikari, Rental Family is an incredibly sweet film that I loved, and am somewhat disappointed to see fade into the background, post-festival season.

Fraser leads the film as American actor, Phillip Vandarpleog, who, after struggling to get meaningful roles in Tokyo, joins a rental family agency, and begins to play the role of a young girl’s absent American father. 

There’s been a lot of chatter about the film’s concept, and how foreign and unbelievable it may appear to someone unfamiliar with it. I’ve already seen lots of people from Japan say that it took this film existing for their American friends to finally believe that this was a real-life concept. It certainly isn’t a westernized ideology, but what the film excels at is presenting this concept in an easily digestible way without dumbing it down, or degrading it. The film certainly has its criticisms of the idea, and is far from being outright romantic about its depictions, but the concepts remain both easy to understand, and to emotionally invest in. 

Of course, nothing else in the film would matter in terms of objective quality if the bond between Brendan Fraser and the young girl (Shannon Gorman) didn’t work, and I’m happy to report that it soars sky high. Gorman’s debut performance is clearly indicative of a very successful future career, and Fraser brings his signature lovability and sentimentality to a role that feels like it was custom made for him.

Obviously this relationship is key to the central thesis of the film, and is the one people are going to, on the whole, remember the most, but it is just one story Fraser’s character finds himself in amongst a pretty steady ensemble of others. The film explores the lives of lonely family men, sex workers, widowers, and even gay couples requesting lavender marriages to appease their families. The film is far from narrow-minded, and for how much it looks to explore in its just under 2 hour runtime, the script pretty miraculously ties it all together. Nothing the film explores feels half baked or as if it needed more time, nor do we ever spend too much time on a single idea. Akira Emoto is an additional stand out in the film as a rich widower seeking companionship from Fraser’s character, as well. He offers some deeply appreciated maturity to the film, and the moments I find myself coming back to the most, almost exclusively involve him in some capacity. 

Visually is certainly where the film leaves the most to be desired. It’s far from ugly, and captures some pretty spectacular forestry photography in a couple of key moments, but a lot of that is just due to the environment’s natural beauty. On a scene-by-scene basis, conversations are often relatively flat, visually, with not a ton of creativity in the staging of scenes. There’s a lot of shot-reverse-shot, not a ton of movement, the edit isn’t entirely rhythmic, etc. I wouldn’t say that any of these points hurt the film necessarily, as there were a couple of key moments that really did make me well up emotionally. But, I’d be remiss if I didn’t wonder how much harder certain moments would hit if there was a bit more nuance to the staging and the edit. 

I was fully expecting this to be a major winner among general audiences, as the festival crowd, particularly at TIFF, where I saw the film, seemed to be head over heels for it, but for whatever reason it seems to be blending into the myriad of other releases coming this holiday season. The film is in theaters now, and if you have a chance, I would highly recommend it. It’s a wonderful film, particularly for the Thanksgiving season.