Rental Family Review: Poignant Ode to the Lonely

With the unpredictable, empathetic story of an actor who starts playing stand-in roles in real life, Hikari’s Rental Family reminds us we are alive.

That’s how our protagonist, Phillip Vandarpleog (Brendan Fraser), who has been living in Tokyo for seven years, finds out that the company who hired him to play the role of ‘sad American’ isn’t your typical agency. Instead of casting actors for films, they provide what they’d call “specialised services,” where the acting takes place in real life. “I might be able to use you for something more than ‘sad American’,” the company owner, Shinji (Takehiro Hira, of Shōgun), tells Phillip, seeing potential in him.

Shinji hands Phillip a business card that reads ‘Rental Family,’ explaining that people contact his agency to hire actors to play stand-in roles for strangers, but Phillip is puzzled. “You don’t have to be that person,” Shinji tells our wary protagonist. “You just have to help them connect to what’s missing,” he adds, describing working with them as “a chance to play roles with a real meaning.”

Phillip is hesitant, but with his acting experience consisting pretty much of a popular toothpaste commercial from years before and not much more, he takes the leap. And so, he’s introduced to Shinji’s colleagues at ‘Rental Family’ – Aiko (Mari Yamamoto, of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) and Kota (Kimura Bun, of Learning to Love) – and cast in his first roles. Soon, he finds himself playing a groom, marrying a complete stranger whose deception to her own family might just earn her her freedom. The roles keep coming, and Phillip starts to find purpose in what he does. More than that, he begins to be good at it – until a much more challenging job comes along.

“This girl needs a father so she can get into a private school,” Aiko tells Phillip, explaining that her mother (Shino Shinozaki) wants the interview with the school to be convincing, which means that he’ll have to be introduced to the child as her actual father. Reluctant at first, Phillip eventually meets the young Mia (Shannon Gorman), and it’s not hard to earn her trust. Not only that, but he soon finds himself enjoying his job, and even turning down actual acting roles so he can spend more time with a child for whom he’s developing real affection, and who’s giving meaning to his life that he didn’t even know he needed.

But what happens when the job is over, and that newfound purpose is torn apart? What should he do with the memories of a life he interpreted so well that it became his own, too? And what about the consequences of all this lying on a child who may have gotten into school but now finds herself without a father again? The longer Phillip works for ‘Rental Family’ – playing various roles at the same time – the more he realizes that the situation is complex.

Yes, he’s been doing some good, but he’s also been hurting real human beings he ended up caring about in very real ways. But what should come first between successfully completing a job, or actually helping these people? The answer isn’t easy, but it’s one that eventually makes Phillip realize that it’s ultimately up to him to decide, and that decision might even turn him into the person he wants to be.

Acting-wise, Brendan Fraser excels in a role he was born to play and that finally lets him showcase just how good he is with subtler, quieter roles. Facial expressions are often enough to tell us all we need to know about Phillip’s emotional state, and the character he crafts is so authentic and raw that we really care about him from the moment we first see him. The rest of the cast is just as great, from the always wonderful Takehiro Hira as Shinji to Mari Yamamoto and Kimura Bun – both of whom previously worked with Hikari on Tokyo Vice – as Aiko and Kota; all three have fantastic chemistry with both each other and Fraser, and a few scenes in particular really showcase their comedic talents too.

The other standouts, with Fraser, are Shannon Gorman and Akira Emoto. Gorman is magnetic as Mia; you won’t be able to take your eyes off her whenever she’s on screen, and though this is only her acting debut, I’m sure it will lead to a very successful career.

Akira Emoto (Zatoichi) plays Kikuo Hasegawa, a well-known actor who is starting to lose his memory, and whose daughter hires Phillip to pretend to be a journalist who’s there to interview him. Thanks to Emoto, Kikuo is the beating heart of Rental Family, with an empathetic and restrained, yet potent and fierce, performance that masterfully conveys the film’s message about how powerful a tool memory can be when it comes to the memories that matter.

Writer-director Hikari (Beef) and co-writer Stephen Blahut (DOP of the director’s previous feature, 37 Seconds) craft a story that’s so authentic and relatable that it feels like it’s unfolding in real time, beautifully tackling multiple themes that are essential to the human condition while refusing to be confined within one genre. Rental Family is just as laugh-out-loud funny as it is tender, heart-warming, and even, at times, utterly devastating. Its infectious irony and humor will have your attention from the very first scene, entertaining you in completely unexpected ways till right before the credits roll. But this is also a film that will make you think about your own life – from the memories you hold dearest to the chances you didn’t take – and remind you that if something isn’t real, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

Rental Family has a lot of things to say about many subjects, from the thin line between performance and reality to the risks we need to take in order to truly live and the state of our current society – and it finds in modern Japan the perfect setting to explore these themes. To me, the film is, above all, a reminder that the connections we make are what make life worth living, and that, because of our universal need to connect as human beings, we’re never truly alone, no matter how lonely and isolated we may feel. To quote another recent release, “we contain multitudes,” and it’s never too late to find a ‘Rental Family’ of our own and become who we were meant to be.

Hikari’s Rental Family is an ode to all the people out there who are lonely, grieving and in pain, a lesson on how healing comes from within, and a reminder that we are alive. It’s irresistibly human, and it’s the best film of the year.

Rental Family was screened at the BFI London Film Festival on 16-19 October, 2025. The film will be released in U.S. theaters on November 21, 2025 and in U.K. and Irish cinemas on January 9, 2026.