Rental Family: A Promise Unfulfilled

Rental Family will be a hit with many. Its concept: a middle aged American actor is struggling to find fulfilling roles during his extended time in Japan until he finds a Rental Family company. Suddenly, he is thrust into emotional family situations as he takes on different roles in different peoples’ life. To one person, he is a father. To another, a journalist and almost everything in between. We watch as Philip navigates the very real emotions that his fake daughter Mia and fake interviewee Kikuo go through. Mia needs her dad in order to get into the school that her mom wants her to go to but she also has a rebellious streak. She doesn’t seem to fit in the way that her mom would prefer. At the same time, Kikuo is losing his memory. His daughter believes that the safest way to handle his more eccentric benders is to get him validated by Philip who is pretending to write an article on Kikuo’s career as an actor.

The film is split emotionally by these two storylines, cutting back and forth between scenes where Philip seems to be juggling both of these roles. Even so, the two are kept very separate. What happens between Mia and Philip never really affects what happens between Kikuo. As a result, both storylines, while containing very emotional moments, plenty of nice comedy and interesting subversion, feel a bit half-baked. Except for personal emptiness and loneliness, Rental never offers a clear desire for what Philip wants to do with his life. He seems to want to help people but his goals other than keeping his job are never wrapped up in his adventures. Philip, then, as the driver of the story, is not as effective in bringing the audience along.

Furthermore the film does end up trying to get us to connect with two of Philip’s colleagues Shinji (Takahiro Hira) and Aiko (Mari Yamamoto) but these storylines again are too separate from Philip. The story wants to revolve around Philip and yet it never brings all the interesting parts of his life together to make something greater than the some of its parts. These components are nice as it uses natural story set ups well, individual scenes are often humorous, and explores this interesting concept well. Unfortunately, it fails to create something greater.

The performances are universally good in this film. Brendan Fraser, in another isolated, emotionally-wrought role, brings a much greater subtly to his performance. He fits in as someone who doesn’t. He awkwardly smiles, tries to hold back emotional faces in the midst of situations that are both weird and heartbreaking. He shows an inner conflict where he’s both emotionally invested in the people who he pretends to be family with and yet can also remove himself at any time. You can see his lack of comfort with the lies that he is telling these people as his true self seems to beg to come out but Fraser keeps it well-hidden. The same can be said of Mari Yamamoto, whose subplot represents a sexism within society that I wish was fleshed out more. Her character undergoes a logical emotional arc as the company seems to take on more ambitious and complex roles.

As a director, HIKARI proves that she has a great sense of vision and how to communicate with an audience. She attempts to pull off the big emotions of her scenes with sentimental music, close ups and gravitating set pieces. However, these feel like rushed attempts to bring out tears in the audience. She doesn’t let these characters, most notably Philip, sit with what they do in longer scenes and situations that feel fully fleshed out. At some points, it feels like things just happen. While she uses great technique and has a strong hand in guiding the audience with the edit and music, it never feels fully earned. There is some interesting shots and use of the locations but it feels like it never fully knows what the film’s strength is. No element stand out in a way that gives HIKARI some voice, making this very personal film feel a bit more distant than I would hope from a writer/director. HIKARI is certainly talented and no doubt elevates her material’s thought-provoking moments overall but never feels fully confident in any story. Thus, each story just feels like a series of events that we feel distant from, even though the emotions of the characters seem to ask us to be fully invested in each character’s feelings.

The way that the film unfolds does not always build well on itself. Its most revelatory and climatic scenes are intriguing but often fail to have created a solid set-up for it. Too much of this concept feels underexplored, despite some parts of the film feeling overlong. It is interesting to see the various types of roles that these actors can take in people’s lives, some of which are great bits comedically but others are wrought with danger. Yet those problems are never the conflict between the characters. For example, Aiko at points pretends to be a mistress who takes full blame for an affair. This is not a role she backs down on despite being far removed from the emotionally fulfilling role that Philip gets as a father. There is never any conflict there but rather just an unspoken resentment from Aiko. We never know enough about her to understand why she sticks with the job and it makes the moment she starts to question her role not as effective as a story point.

These characters are interesting but it felt like more or more specific elements of their lives could have been investigated with more time. It feels like a unique TV or personal epic that is crunched down to a studio-acceptable two hours story-wise. While the film has a great concept, it still feels like it needed different storylines and approaches to fully fulfill the promise of emotion its ideas present.

Rental Family is in theatres on Friday, November 21st, 2025.