Rental Family Review – Film & TV Review

Rental Family is the kind of film that hooks viewers with a strange-but-true premise, then quietly tightens the emotional screws until it lands somewhere tender, awkward, and unexpectedly human. In a crowded landscape of Films chasing quirk for quirk’s sake, this one uses its high-concept setup to explore connection, performance, and the soft devastation of feeling replaceable. Directed by Hikari in a confident English-language debut, the story follows a washed-up American actor (Brendan Fraser) living in Tokyo who falls into work at a “rental family” agency — a real-world service where clients hire stand-ins to play relatives, friends, or supportive strangers. At first, it looks like just another gig: show up, say the right lines, be what someone needs for an hour. But each job nudges him further into moral grey areas, including posing as a father figure to an 11-year-old girl and taking on assignments where the emotional stakes are far too high for something that’s meant to be transactional. Hikari’s direction keeps the film grounded even when the premise could drift into satire or melodrama, that just about walks a fine line  of the the right side of  ‘only in a movie ‘ main premise.Tokyo is shot in bright, lived-in daylight rather than neon spectacle, which makes the loneliness feel less like a mood and more like a daily fact of life. The pacing is measured, with scenes allowed to breathe, and the film’s comedy tends to arrive in small behavioural details — the awkward pauses, the forced smiles, the tiny lies that pile up.

Fraser is the engine. The performance walks a tricky line: an actor playing an actor who is paid to perform intimacy. Fraser sells the initial detachment — the “this is just work” mask — and then lets the cracks appear with minimal fuss. The best moments aren’t big speeches; they’re the quiet realisations when the character can’t tell whether he’s still acting, or whether he’s started to genuinely care. The supporting cast helps keep the emotional temperature honest. Takehiro Hira and Mari Yamamoto bring restraint and texture, while Shannon Mahina Gorman is impressively natural in a role that could easily tip into cuteness. Together, they make the film’s found-family pull feel earned, not packaged. As a comedy-drama, Rental Family has a unique take: it treats “performing” kindness as both a comfort and a problem. It also doesn’t dodge the uncomfortable question at the centre — if a relationship starts as a lie but ends in real feeling, does that redeem the lie, or deepen it? Rating: 4/5 stars Rental Family is in UK cinemas from 16 January 2026.