Rental Family

37th Episode of Yuri's Film Collection

Story in a few words

Rental Family (2025), directed by Hikari and starring Brendan Fraser, is a Tokyo-set dramedy exploring loneliness and the human need for connection through the lens of Japan's real-life "rental person" industry. It follows Phillip (Fraser), a struggling, isolated American actor who finds purpose playing roles like a father, friend, or husband for strangers.

In my own words

The film was really enjoyable to watch to be honest, it has really beautiful visuals and cinematography showing the beautiful landscape of Japan, and for me personally it was really interesting to watch this film because I myself was in Japan for the two weeks seeing all those different landscapes which were really beautiful, and I also understood a lot of culture stuff in the film as I learnt those things during my Japan trip. The film is about people who have a lonely life or just need a person in their life and that's where the rental people come in play, and that's a real thing in Japan, really common actually. It was really heartwarming to watch and the story was also really good and well written. Brendan Fraser, who played the American actor living and working in Japan, really played the role extraordinary, and Fraser I think is in general a really chill guy and fitted pretty good in this character. After this film I really want to watch his Oscar nominated film called Whale where he also performed really well, but in general this film is really really good, especially in this time of film making it's a fresh breeze for cinemas. A heartwarming, visually striking, relatable film is always good and worth a watch, and in this film you also learn a lot of new things about Japan and the life there. I think after you watched this film you really wanna go there, and I think for me this film will be in my top 3 list when it comes to life and hard times because it reminds you that there are good people who really wanna help you and wanna make your life a bit better and happier.

Thanks for reading today's episode of Yuri's Film Collection
10.02.2026

Directed by: Hikari
Written by: Hikari and Stephen Blahut
Star Cast: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira and Mari Yamamoto

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