Review: 'Rental Family,' with Brendan Fraser as an American actor in Tokyo, doesn't dig deep enough to overcome its sentimental streak

Somewhere buried in the fish-out-of-water comedy-drama “Rental Family” is a solid character study about an American actor in Tokyo that Brendan Fraser could really grabbed with both hands.

Alas, that movie is trying to dig out from a jumbled series of interlocking vignettes that keeps the audience at a distance from the main character’s emotional journey.

Fraser plays Phillip Vandarpleog, an American actor living in Tokyo, barely scraping by on the limited roles he can get as the token Westerner — or gaijin — in Japanese productions. His career highlight was as a smiling superhero in a toothpaste commercial. 

One day, his agent tells him he can get paid if he goes immediately to a funeral and act as a designated mourner. Phillip soon learns the funeral’s a fake — one of many scenarios set up by a guy, Shinji Tada (Takehiro Hira, from “Shogun”), who runs a business called Rental Family. Tada’s business is renting out people who can act like whatever the client needs. After bering a funeral mourner, Phillip’s next gig is to be a Canadian groom for a woman (Misato Morita) who can’t tell her parents she actually wants to marry her girlfriend.

Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), one of Tada’s employees, explains to a disbelieving Phillip that this is the Japanese way — to concoct a comforting lie rather than reveal an unpleasant truth. Aiko’s specialty is “apology services,” playing “the other woman” to express remorse to a philandering man’s wife, letting the real mistress off the hook.

The director Kitari, who wrote the screenplay with Stephen Blahut, eventually puts Phillip juggling two cases at once. In one scenario, he’s hired by the family of a forgotten actor (Akira Emoto), to play an American movie journalist writing a biography of him. In the other, he’s the long-missing Western father of a mixed-race girl, Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), brought in by the girl’s mother to encourage her to take a school entrance exam.

The problem with “Rental Family” is that there are so many vignettes, so many clients, that no one story ever gets enough traction. If Kitari would have focused on one — my vote would be Phillip’s guilt at lying to Mia — “Rental Family” would have felt more naturally moving and not so manipulative.

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‘Rental Family’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 21, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some strong language, and suggestive material. Running time: 103 minutes.