Despite a promising premise, Hikari’s Rental Family (C) proves an undercooked and overly sentimental bunch of hokum. Brendan Fraser plays an American commercial and character actor working in Japan who is recruited by an unusual talent agency to portray fictional people in real life to compensate for something that’s missing. He’s like an emotional support animal to upend family dynamics. Whether it’s the single mother who needs him to play the long-lost dad to help her daughter get into a private school or the single and struggling bachelorette in need of a convenient and compensated groom to prove to her parents she’s suitably settled, the film is episodic and oddly clinical. Some of these matches offer more than each bargains for as the actor learns more about himself and the culture in which he’s engulfed. Although likable enough, Fraser plays his character at a distant low simmer, and the escapades are neither subtle nor arch enough to much entertain. It’s all rather restrained and predictable. As a meditation on loneliness, it succeeds in spurts, but it’s also tied in too tidy a package to expose much below the surface.