An ‘immensely heartwarming’ new movie is available to watch now

Starring a recent Oscar winner, the comedy-drama is from one of the makers of Netflix's Beef.

If you love darker genre fare, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is on offer, which we recently hailed as the first five-star film of 2026.

That said, if horror and violence onscreen isn't for you, a gentle heartwarming crowdpleaser has also just landed in theatres: Rental Family.

The comedy-drama stars recent Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser (immensely likeable) as Phillip, an American actor who has lived in Tokyo for seven years.

He moved over to the Japanese capital to star in a TV advertisement for toothpaste that proved hugely popular.

Yet, in the intervening time, acting opportunities have dried up. Phillip has grown lonely and disconnected, which star Fraser and co-writer and director Hikari (Netflix's Beef) convey beautifully and succinctly in the film's near-wordless opening few minutes.

The American winds up being approached for work by Shinji (Takehiro Hira), the owner of Rental Family, a company that provides actors to play stand-in family members and friends for strangers.

A real-life phenomenon in Japan, Shinji explains to Phillip that in Japan's deeply traditionalist society, there are many reasons why a client may desire to hire someone to play a role, much of which has to do with the customer wishing to keep up appearances to others.

As the Rental Family owner tells the American: "What I'm offering here is a chance to play roles with real meaning."

While apprehensive, Phillip accepts Shinji's offer, first portraying a fiancé for a woman (Misato Morita) who wishes to stage a wedding for her parents before she emigrates.

He is then hired by a single mother (Shino Shinozaki) to pose as the estranged father of her young girl (Shannon Mahina Gorman). This is to help the mum secure her child a place in a fancy private school.

As Phillip takes on more clients and forms strong bonds with them, the line between acting and reality starts to blur.

In lesser hands, Rental Family could feel like what audiences used to derogatorily dub "Oscar bait".

It's a feel-good comedy-drama. It's about a culture clash. It even marks Fraser's first lead role since winning an Academy Award.

Yet, Hikari and her co-writer Stephen Blahut eschew the overly mawkish sentimentality and simplistic messaging that have plagued many an Oscar nominee, in favour of heightened nuance and observation.

While the idea of a rental family service may strike Westerners as unusual, the filmmakers do remarkable work not only making viewers understand why someone might seek one out, but also treating the people who do with empathy.

This is not only in the emotionally affecting glimpses we get into each of these clients' lives, but also in how the customers impact Phillip.

Referred to at one point as a "gaijin", meaning "foreigner", he is someone who too lacks connection to the world around him (early on, we see him in the company of a sex worker, whom he hired out of loneliness). That said, he totally blossoms in the course of his new work.

But yet, Blahut and Hikari also don't shy away from some of the more awkward or unpleasant aspects of a rental family service gig.

With their tale of this unique profession, the writers seem to be acknowledging that life often requires people to "fake it until they make it" to get by.

Where to draw the line between the real and pretend, however, they playfully leave it up to the viewer to decide, in a comedy-drama that, while never really groundbreaking, is often quite lovely.

Rental Family is in cinemas now.