Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!
Brendan Fraser seems like one of those people who is genuinely a nice person. He’s the kind of person who I want to see succeed; he seems like someone who would be fun to hang out with, or have dinner with. When I first saw the trailer for Rental Family, I was of two minds. First, I thought it looked like the sort of film that Fraser should be doing—a drama with a great deal of heart, but it also looked like a film designed to capitalize on Fraser’s recent resurgence and Oscar win. But I also knew that I would be unable to resist watching it.
This is important for Rental Family, because this is a film that only works if we like Brendan Fraser. Well, we need to like his character. This is very much a film about empathy, and getting to that is going to be hampered if we have none for the main character.
Phillip Vanderploeg (Fraser) is an American actor working in Japan. He’s had minor success and small roles, and he makes a living, but also struggles. Things start to change, at least financially for him, when he is hired by Rental Family, a service that provides actors to stand in for people at important events. Need additional mourners? Need a fake husband for your high school reunion? They’re the company. Phil is an exciting acquisition because there is an actual demand for a white guy at Japanese events.
Phil isn’t really keen on this idea and almost bails out of his first major assignment, standing in as the groom for a wedding. What he discovers afterwards is that the “bride” was already married to a woman, and she needed something to placate her family. She needed her parents to see that she was marrying someone before she and her new “husband” went to Canada for his job (where she is actually going with her wife). He helps her provide the memory for her parents, and he ends up feeling pretty good about himself and his new job.
Much of the film is going to concern two simultaneous jobs that he gets. The first is to act as the stand-in father for Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), a young girl whose mother is trying to get her into an elite school. These interviews do better with two parents, and since Mia’s father is out of the picture (and since Mia is clearly half-not Japanese). The other job involves an actor named Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto). Kikuo is slowly sliding into dementia and his daughter claims that he is concerned with fading into obscurity. Phil has been chosen to come to the house and interview Kikuo, telling him it is for a magazine story.
What happens is that Phillip discovers that he missed the empathy that he is now essentially contractually obligated to now provide for people. He discovers that he genuinely cares for the people he is now dealing with, despite being told that doing so tends to be difficult to disengage, both for him and for the clients. This is despite making promises to both Mia and Kikuo, the first to never leave her again (she is told that he is actually her father), the second to help him return to his boyhood home.
This being the story, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Rental Family is a movie that spends a lot of time on empathy, on seeing what these changes bring about in Phillip and how he is forced to adjust his life. We’ll spend a little time with Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), who also works at the company. She is frequently hired by men to stand in as their mistresses and apologize to their wives, a job for which she is sometimes physically assaulted.
There’s a lot going for this film, although that starts with Fraser. He has lovely chemistry with the people on set, particularly his two customers. Phil is trying desperately to be a father to Mia, and dealing with the fact that she doesn’t like him because she believes that he abandoned her and her mother. With Kikuo, Phil wants to respect his past career but also wants to help him receive some closure on whatever the reason is he wants to return home (don’t worry—we do find out).
This is a sweet and lovely film. Fraser is good—the whole cast is—and this might be the norm for Fraser these days. He is earnest and eager to please, and this makes him likeable. That’s not easy to pull off—Phil is someone who wants to feel like his promises are real. He wants to be there for these people. Fraser has to walk a line here between seeming serious but not getting to the point of maudlin, and he does it well. Shannon Mahina Gorman is also excellent, both vulnerable and very much her own person.
With more bite, this might be an Oscar contender, but to be fair to the film, not everything needs to be that. Sometimes you want something sweet, where the conflicts aren’t going to get someone killed but just might embarrass someone. It’s an easy watch, and sometimes, that’s what you need.
Why to watch Rental Family: Because genuine human connection feels rare in this world.
Why not to watch: If you’re emotionally frail at the moment, this one might be tough.
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