Lately somebody requested me what film I used to be about to overview, which as you’ll be able to think about occurs so much. I informed them, “It’s this new Brendan Fraser film referred to as ‘Rental Household.’” That’s when the telephone went quiet. Chillingly quiet. After a second they stated they felt dangerous for Brendan Fraser, as a result of he simply received an Oscar and it feels like he was already starring in one other banal household comedy like “Furry Vengeance” — the one the place forest critters splash water on his pants so he appears to be like like he’s peed himself.
Belief me, the state of affairs is nowhere close to that dire. “Rental Household” might sound like a generic PG-rated household flick however the Searchlight Photos movie is definitely a young, modest drama that simply occurs to have a premise proper out of a PG-rated household flick. It’s straightforward to see what attracted Fraser to this materials, because it’s virtually mechanically designed to make him look good as an actor, and enchanting as a star.
“Rental Household” stars Fraser as Phillip Vandarploeug, an American actor dwelling in Japan, whose agent has apparently by no means as soon as instructed he change his final title. Phillip isn’t terribly profitable, however there are a number of roles for token white guys and he doesn’t want a day job to complement his earnings, so he can’t be doing very badly both.
At some point Phillip will get employed for a mysterious new gig. He reveals up and realizes he’s an additional in anyone’s funeral. Besides no one is filming it. Phillip has wandered into the very actual world of rental household providers, the place folks rent actors to fill in any other case empty roles of their lives. They want folks to pad out the visitor listing at events, or faux to be pals and lovers, or stand-in for somebody’s absentee father at parent-teacher conferences. And identical to Phillip’s different appearing gigs, there’s normally a job for an additional token white man.
Rental household providers aren’t frequent in America, and in a lesser film they might be the supply of low cost and judgmental comedy. So director Hikari (“37 Seconds”) and co-writer Stephen Blahut attempt to get Phillip’s tradition shock out of the best way shortly. In Phillip’s first massive gig he has to faux to get married to a younger Japanese lady, fooling her household within the course of, and Phillip finds that morally dicey. A lot in order that he virtually backs out on the final second. This explicit vignette concludes in essentially the most heroic means potential, portraying rental household providers in an exceptionally optimistic gentle.
Afterwards, Phillip’s co-worker offers him a stern speaking to about his judgmental western angle, taking him — and by extension, American audiences — to process for not even attempting to know the tradition through which they’re presently immersed. Phillip, who loves Japan and makes his dwelling there, realizes he was incorrect and embraces this new position. He turns into a fictional father to slightly lady who briefly wants one, regardless that he’ll finally must abandon her and break her coronary heart. He additionally impersonates a movie critic and conducts a sequence of interviews with an getting older star, simply to make the person really feel like audiences haven’t forgotten him.
In brief, “Rental Household” is about why we depend on actors. Films and performs fill voids in our lives, giving us romance when now we have none, and catharsis when destiny fails to come back by means of. The actors in “Rental Household” get off their stage and stroll straight into their shopper’s lives, offering a extra immersive expertise. It’s a love letter to humane performances, the kind of roles Brendan Fraser all the time excels at. That is no exception.
Hikari’s movie doesn’t fully draw back from the ethical gray areas of rental household providers. Phillip’s co-worker, performed by Mari Yamamoto (“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters”), is commonly forged as the opposite lady in extramarital affairs, and takes all the blame for a dishonest husband’s betrayal. It’s humiliating and infrequently abusive, and “Rental Household” considers it the darkish aspect of this phenomenon. In these cases the job isn’t about contributing to folks’s lives, it’s about aiding and abetting these manipulative males and their misogyny.
It’s all very attention-grabbing, regardless that it’s tonally chaotic. “Rental Household” is, in turns, healthful and cruel, humorous and extreme, contrived and chic. It’s in any case a movie about actors with oodles of vary, present process the distinctive challenges of their craft, and these shifts serve the fabric properly however they don’t all the time work wonders for the viewers. It’s straightforward to wrestle with how precisely we’re purported to really feel about all this.
However once more, it’s not about how we “really feel” about rental households, it’s about how properly we perceive them. After watching this movie I perceive rental households higher, however I nonetheless don’t perceive the apply properly sufficient to evaluate, and that additionally means I don’t perceive rental households properly sufficient to find out if “Rental Household” does any justice to this matter. All I can say for sure is that Hikari’s movie is a posh dialog concerning the craft of appearing, however typically will get sidelined in its personal contrivances and emotional manipulations, calling consideration to the artifice of, admittedly, a narrative about artifice.
“Rental Household” opens in theaters on Nov. 21.
