“… make you feel like family is who we include, rather than we were assigned to.”
– Actor Brendan Fraser discussing Rental Family.
The world can feel like a cruel and unforgiving place that isolates you at every opportunity. That every time you try to come up for air, there’s someone or something that makes you want to crawl deep into a hole and remain there forever. This is why connection matters so much, it ensures that folks remember that there is more to this world than the cruelty within it, that there’s light and love through community. This is a core element of filmmaker HIKARI’s (37 Seconds; Beef) latest project, Rental Family, which takes the fish-out-of-water concept and funnels it through the specifically Japanese lens of a gaijin who discovers that existing in Japan isn’t the same as living there. After a theatrical run in the Fall of 2025, Rental Family is headed home with over 40 minutes of bonus materials to allow those who enjoyed the heartfelt dramedy to explore it even more.
Seven years since moving to Japan after taking a commercial gig, actor Phillip Vanderploeg continues to find himself adrift in the country. While waiting to hear word back on a sought-after audition, he takes a gig as a funeral attendee that, incidentally, puts him on the radar of Shinji (Takehiro Hira) who hires him to work at his rental family agency in the role of “White Man.” Doing so is meant to be temporary, a transitional gig to keep him going financially while he waits for word on his audition status, but the gigs he takes reframes his perspective on life, love, and connection in several unexpected ways that create a transition within himself.
The following home release review is based on a digital edition provided by Searchlight Pictures. Additionally, as this is a digital release review, there’s no way to discuss the fidelity of the presentation or audio as that is dependent on your internet service provider, the method of accessing the film (iTunes vs. MoviesAnywhere, etc), and other factors.
According to the sole featurette, “Rental Family Revealed,” director/co-writer HIKARI and co-writer Stephen Blahut borrowed from their respective experiences to create the concept for the film. For HIKARI, it was her experience of moving to the United States as an older teen and the feeling of loneliness, while for Blahut, it’s born from his experience in 2019 of looking for work to supplement his income between jobs and learning of the rental family business that’s quite popular in Japan. These disparate experiences form the basis of Rental Family, the story of an outsider who accidentally finds himself in gig for a rental family business that ultimately teaches him about connection. The film is, quite simply, wholesome, which is both quite necessary in our trying times yet also strangely so simplistic that it feels vapid. Conflicts are low stakes, for the most part, with the emphasis being on Phillip’s journey to open himself up and the consequences of said journey. It’s an interesting choice by HIKARI and Blahut to center Phillip, not because he’s an outsider, but because he’s an actor, a job in which connecting with others is the most important piece of it. Fraser is a truly gifted performer with a catalogue of titles ranging from comedies (Encino Man; Airheads) to dramas (School Ties; With Honors) to action titles (The Mummy series) and his sincerity comes through regardless of the outrageous circumstances his characters may be in. Here, Fraser is able to convey the depth of pain Phillip feels at his own internal disconnection, his longing to be with others, not just through his nightly observation of his neighbors from his apartment balcony but through the fact that his most successful job has been an old toothpaste commercial in which he was later replaced some time before the film’s start. Through Phillip’s journey we, the audience, see how much connection matters and how, even those whose work it is to create a connection (even a knowingly false one), generates intrinsic meaning for an individual and, ultimately, self-worth through community.
R-L: Director HIKARI with actor Brendan Fraser on the set of RENTAL FAMILY. Photo by James Lisle/Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
This being a tale told through Phillip, one is reminded that community is where people live, not just within a state or country, which is why Fraser’s comment about the film via the featurette — “… make you feel like family is who we include, rather than we were assigned to.” — hits so hard with the film’s intention. The family we make for ourselves through connection and community is often more powerful than the one we’re born into. It’s an obvious statement and the way in which the film incorporates this with the members of the rental family business shifting from “this is the way things are” to “there’s a different way to be” is what makes Rental Family seem a bit too on-the-nose for some. It’s important, to be sure, especially as the U.S. finds itself combating federal forces via community action, community will always win because their numbers are larger and their intentions are more pure. We need reminders that a community in harmony is about togetherness, about support, about uplifting each other, especially in trying times; however, the ways in which Rental Family goes about it can often create cringe difficult to overlook, especially in regards to the Mia storyline (Shannon Mahina Gorman’s first performance and she holds her own with Fraser) which resolves itself too neatly and makes one recoil a bit as the two call themselves friends after the fact — he having just pretended to be her father for a time and she being in elementary school. Perhaps it’s the difference in cultural norms, but there’s something icky about the resolution and its acceptance level. By contrast, the Kikuo storyline (Akira Emoto) is emotional and sweet, yet there were some clear breaches of conduct and lawfulness that, despite the intention, really should have had actual consequences. We don’t want this for Phillip and neither does the film, which is why he gets off so easily, and that somehow brings down the film in its contradictions of the exploration of interpersonal relationships. If one isn’t swept up in the sweetness, the awareness of the issues pile up, thereby creating that sense of vapidness mentioned prior.
If, however, you’re a fan of the film, the 10-minute “Rental Family Revealed” and 17 minutes of deleted features may intrigue you. The featurette delves fairly deeply into where the concept of the film came from, the history of the rental family business (goes back to 1600 Edo Japan), the cast’s specific experience in shooting the film (and what they took from it), how Fraser was cast, and a great deal more. One fun tidbit is that, in order to make Phillip seem as authentic as possible, Fraser took classes to learn Japanese ahead of shooting and then worked with a dialect coach during filming so that he wasn’t just reading lines, but understood the emotionally context to make his character’s perspective come through. The deleted scenes are a collection which, within the scope of the film, make sense to have been cut in order to maintain rhythm and pacing. However, they provide an opportunity to better understand Mari Yamamoto’s Aki (which I think matters as Aki is the member of the team most disproving of Phillip). There’s also a wonderful, brief sequence that opens up a bit of Phillip’s backstory that we don’t receive in the final film relating to his father (briefly mentioned when Phillip is hired to play a dad), which, interestingly, also plays into a previous deleted scene related to cry therapy. The final montage also provides a better sense of what comes next for three characters.
Viewed through the lens of good intentions, Rental Family is a bit like a warm hug from a beloved friend: inviting, consolable, and heartfelt. It can remind us that joy is something we should seek out and not to do so alone. This isn’t to suggest that one can’t be alone and fulfilled, but that community is an important part of living. To paraphrase Fraser from the end of the featurette, one must find joy through living and that, by trusting yourself, even when things go wrong, you are where you were supposed to be and that can’t be bad. It’s a wonderful sentiment and surely one that Rental Family encourages. What else you glean from it is, as always, up to you.
Rental Family Special Features*:
- Rental Family Revealed — Go behind the scenes with Brendan Fraser, director HIKARI, and the Japanese cast as they explore friendship, culture, found family, and filming in Japan in this intimate look at the making of Rental Family. (10:35)
- Nine (9) Deleted/Extended Scenes (17:11)
*Bonus features may vary by product and retailer.
Available on digital January 13th, 2026.
Available on Blu-ray February 17th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Searchlight Pictures Rental Family webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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