“Rental Family,” starring Brendan Fraser, is earning glowing reviews as a heartwarming holiday film and a thoughtful look at a unique Japanese business addressing social isolation.

Fraser is terrific as the unmistakably tall, foreigner navigating Tokyo’s streets. Having lived in the city for almost ten years, he hasn’t hit it big, mostly appearing in odd TV commercials and public costume gigs—his stiff tree outfit hilariously capturing the essence of “wooden acting.”

But he is invited to try out for an unusual role as a “sad American” by a “rental family” agency and he accepts the role, after some hesitation. He asks why him, and the owner of the agency, played by Takehiro Hira, tells him “we need a token white guy.”

“Rental Family” manages to be both funny and powerfully moving – many viewers cry at various points during the film, as well as guffawing with laughter at the unexpected human juxtapositions. That first gig that Fraser’s character Phillip is hired for, for instance, turns out to be a funeral … for a man who isn’t dead. He was the agency’s client, who wanted to hire a slew of actors to play his friends and family grieving his passing so he could see what it would feel like to attend his own funeral. 

Phillip is later hired to play various characters including a friend to a man who lives alone and just plays video games, a journalist who’s interviewing an aging movie star with dementia, and a father to a mixed-race girl who abandoned her and her mother. In each case, Fraser’s characters (he assumes different identities for each client) confront issues that are endemic in Japanese society. 

The video game man is a hikikomori, someone who withdraws from society and isolates himself. The once-famous actor with dementia puts up with Phillip’s nosy reporter questions, but then asks hims to help him “break out” of his confined and controlled life to embrace a secret from his youth. 

The rental family culture in Japan was born in the 1980s, helping people deal with and work through various types of loneliness in a country where cultural values makes talking about loneliness, reaching out and asking for help, or admitting to mental health or emotional issues is taboo.

The main relationship in the movie isn’t one of obvious loneliness. The young girl, beautifully played by now-11-year-old Shannon Gorman who is mixed race and perfectly cast as Mia, is being raised by a single mother who needs her father to come back into her life so Mia could apply to attend an exclusive private school (yes, in Japan’s strict social structure, she wouldn’t be accepted without both parents). So Phillip once again is the token white guy who plays her dad.

Phillip and Mia grow close over the weeks he has to play her father, and the main narrative arc is based on their relationship. 

The script of “Rental Family,” co-written and directed by Hikari, balances English and Japanese – and to his credit, Fraser learned a bit of Japanese and was coached well enough that he pronounced his Japanese lines well, albeit with an American accent. The values of the movie are true to the way Japanese truly are, which is why the movie is so touching. 

Japan is both exotic and different, and surprisingly familiar and easy to embrace. So viewers will be taken in by the visual wonders of Tokyo and the beauty of rural Japan – and Hikari’s incredibly thoughtful directing and the film’s many beautiful and artistically framed camera shots – and then connect deeply with the emotional storytelling that unfolds.