By Mr Hull's Movie Guides
Watch the Trailer
What's Inside the Guide
This is a 15-page classroom-ready resource.
Three complete question sets covering the movie in chronological order. Answer keys are included for all three sets.
- 45 full-sentence question set, tracking the movie from beginning to end.
- 30-question version, with 15 questions removed from the 45-question set.
- 30-question multiple-choice set with three options per question, suitable for younger students or language learners.
- Nine key scenes illustrated and described from the movie, covering the beginning, middle, and end, each panel including a drawing and a short description of the main idea it represents.
- A synopsis of the movie, written using their completed storyboard as a guide, in their own words.
Students take on the role of an employee at the rental family agency who receives a call from a new client. They record key details about the client's situation and the role required, then create a character profile for Phillip based on those needs. They then write a short script showing Phillip meeting the client and performing the role. This section can also be used as a drama activity, with students performing their scripts in groups.
Why Watch This Movie With Your Students
Here's what your students naturally take away from the movie, whether through themes, values, ideas, or perspectives.
🎭 A story built around identity and performance. Phillip is an actor paid to be someone else. The movie raises genuine questions about who we are when we play a role, whether performed kindness has real value, and what it means to connect with someone even under false pretences. These are ideas older students find genuinely compelling.
🤝 Empathy as the engine of the plot. Each client Phillip meets needs something different from him. Watching him adapt, listen, and eventually care about each person gives students a model of empathy in action rather than just a theme to identify. This maps directly onto SEL frameworks around self-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
🏢 Based on a real phenomenon. Rental family agencies exist in Japan. There are currently around 300 of them, where professional actors are hired to attend weddings, funerals, and family events, or simply to provide companionship. Knowing this is real changes how students engage with the movie entirely, and opens up rich discussion about modern society, loneliness, and cultural pressure.
🌏 A window into Japanese culture. The movie is set entirely in Tokyo and features a mostly Japanese cast and crew. Customs around weddings, funerals, food, and social norms are woven throughout. For Social Studies teachers, this is genuine cultural content rather than a backdrop.
💬 Moral complexity worth exploring. The movie's central question is whether a lie can be a loving act. It is a genuine philosophical problem with no clean resolution, and the kind of question that generates real debate in a classroom long after the lesson is over.
🪞 An actor who has lost himself finding meaning in other people's stories. Phillip is professionally skilled at performing emotion he does not feel. Watching that gradually change as his clients become real to him is the quiet emotional arc at the centre of the movie. Students who notice it happening engage with it on a completely different level.
🧓 Themes that connect to real life. Loneliness, purpose, family, and the need for human connection are not abstract for older students. The movie handles these themes honestly and without sentimentality, which makes it feel relevant rather than preachy.
Age Suitability and Content
This movie is rated PG-13.
⚠️ Things to be aware of:
- Implied non-graphic sexual content: a man and a female sex worker are shown in bed and in a bath together, covered throughout
- An exotic dancer is shown posing suggestively on a stage
- Occasional strong language including s--t and goddamn
- Adults drink beer, sake, champagne, and liquor throughout
- A hard slap that leaves a bruise
- A character is hospitalised
- Themes of loneliness, dementia, and family estrangement, handled with care
📋 A free editable parent permission slip is available for this movie. It explains the educational benefits of watching movies in class and includes a space for parental consent. → Download Free Permission Slip on TpT (Free resource)
Note for educators: Movie details and age ratings in this post are sourced from IMDb, Common Sense Media, and Wikipedia to help ensure accuracy.
How My Movie Guide Helps You Teach It
Click your subject below to see how this guide supports it:
📚 English Language Arts Teachers
🗣️ ESL and ELL Teachers
🌐 Social Studies Teachers
🎬 Substitute Teachers and Cover Lessons
🏠 Homeschool Parents
🎭 Theater Teachers
💙 SEL Teachers
🌟 Supporting All Learners A movie gives students a story to follow, and the guide gives them questions to work through as they watch. For students with autism, learning difficulties, and mild to severe disabilities, that combination provides a clear focus for the lesson and a concrete way to show understanding. The format can be useful in special education and learning support classrooms, where teachers need activities that give students a defined task during viewing. Find out more about why movies work for diverse learners.
This guide is built around the movie's narrative, themes, and creative premise. It is not tied to specific subject-area curriculum standards. For science or social studies teachers using the movie for accountability purposes, the comprehension questions will keep students engaged and give them something to submit, but the guide is not designed as subject-specific curriculum content.
How These Guides Work: From Movie to Lesson
Watching a movie is not a break from learning. It reaches students through sight, sound, and story at once, engaging the brain in ways text alone does not, and the structured work around it is what turns the viewing into a genuine lesson. You can read the research behind this on the Why Movies Work page.
- A Teacher Notes and General Directions page opens the guide with a brief overview of everything inside: what the movie is about, then each part of the guide in order with a short description of what it entails. You know what to expect from the whole resource before you hand out a single page, so you can pick up the guide cold and teach it the same day.
- Answer keys are included for the comprehension question sets, so grading is quick and you are not rewatching the movie to check answers. Some guides also include example answers for the creative and written activities.
- Print and go: classroom ready, with no additional preparation needed. Print one the morning you need it and the lesson is ready.
- Substitute and first-timer friendly. A guide can be handed to a substitute or picked up by a teacher covering the topic for the first time. Nobody running the session needs to have seen the movie.
- Differentiated comprehension sets. Most guides include two or three question sets at different difficulty levels, and most include a multiple-choice option that works well for ESL and ELL students. One class set covers your strongest readers, your strugglers, and your language learners without separate prep.
- Activities that go beyond recall. Each guide includes structured activities that ask students to engage with the movie, not just watch it, ranging from creative and written tasks to discussion and critical thinking questions depending on the guide. That variety matters in a mixed classroom: a student who freezes on a written question set may show real understanding through a drawing or a creative task, and a confident writer gets room to go beyond recall. For the teacher, it turns a movie session into work you can grade: comprehension questions show whether students followed the plot, and the activities beyond them show whether they understood it.
