Director: Hikari
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto
Certificate: 12A
Run Time: 110 mins

Rental Family is a comedy drama starring Brendan Fraser as Phillip Vanderploeg, a Japanese-based American actor who has been struggling to find meaningful work after a successful toothpaste advert seven years earlier. He meets Shinji (Takehiro Hira) who introduces him to his company, ‘Rental Family’, a business that provides actors to play stand-in family members and friends for strangers. “We sell emotion” is how Shinji sells it. Although somewhat reluctant at first, Phillip takes on two long-term jobs – one acting as the estranged father of a young half-Japanese girl called Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), who her mother thinks will be a great way to boost her daughter’s mood to get her into private school, and another as a journalist profiling retired actor Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto) with dementia. But Phillip finds himself getting a little too involved and finds himself caring for them.

This is a sweet-natured and very positive comedy-drama with an excellent Brendan Fraser performance that you’re sure to walk out of with a smile on your face. While the first half borders on saccharine, director Hikari does enough to keep things more than interesting in the latter half where the complexities and moral questionings of what the firm’s employees do come into the fray and it takes a more melancholic tone.

It’s hard not to be totally wrapped up by Fraser’s deliciously twinkly performance, with a gentle physicality and affable temperament – and Rental Family wouldn’t be half of what it is without that central performance. There’s good supporting performances from the rest of the cast, and there’s reasonably strong development of the firm’s employees who begin to form a warm dynamic. Takurô Ishizaka lenses the film neatly too, with some colourful, sweeping shots of the luscious Japanese landscape.

But although I enjoyed Rental Family for what it is, I wanted a deeper exploration into the themes of loneliness and loss, which the film only touches on. That would have given the narrative more of a complete circle. Still, if you want an uplifting comedy-drama with an effortlessly likeable Brendan Fraser, Rental Family hits the spot.