Show: Rennervations

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anil Kapoor, Vanessa Hudgens, Rory Millikin, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Yatra

OTT: Disney+Hotstar

Rating: 3 Moons

Jeremy Renner, who plays the popular Marvel Avenger, Hawkeye aka Clint Barton brings an original four-part documentary series in Disney+Hotstar’ Rennervations. The series embraces and showcases his lifelong passion to give back to communities around the world by reimagining and remodeling decommissioned vehicles to meet a community’s needs. The docuseries shows Renner’s passion on purchasing and re-imagining huge vehicles and reveals that he owns almost 300 of them, that ranges from trucks, trawlers, buses, ambulances and what not.

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In Rennervations we see Jeremy get to work to reimagine and remodel the vehicles that have been discarded by the governments across the world. He purchases them and along with his connections in the worldwide fabricator culture get the machines back on road to serve a special need for a particular community. In this endeavour he is joined by his best friend and business partner, Rory Millikin and an all-star build crew.

The four-part docuseries takes us deep into the problems posed by the communities and how Jeremy and his crew along with Rory tackle that and solve by giving them a refurbished vehicle to suit their requirements. The first episode Chicago: Building a Mobile Music Bus deals in how a tour bus is rebuild as mobile music studio for The BASE Chicago, an organization that offers different after-school programs to help keep inner-city youths off the streets in Chicago, Illinois. Jeremy wants to provide The BASE Chicago kids with a new musical outlet to encourage them so that they can dream big and make something out of their lives. He and his elite team of fabricators and mechanics transform a tour bus into a music studio for kids to record their own music, play instruments and let their creativity flow. In order to deliver the reimagined and renovated bus, the actor ropes in actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens.

The second episode, India: Building a Mobile Water Treatment Center lands much closer home as Jeremy and Rory come down to India to renovate a delivery truck into a mobile water treatment facility for facility for Uva Jagriti Sansthan, a nonprofit organization trying to deliver clean, drinkable water to communities across India. Jeremy wants to provide a mobile source for these communities and schools in Rajasthan so that they easier access to portable, filtered water. In this episode, Jeremy takes the help of local fabricators who repurpose a delivery truck into a mobile water treatment facility coupled with an entertainment center (a suggestion that comes from Anil Kapoor, who comes on board to help Jeremy).

In this episode we get to see more involvement by the celebrity guest who turns out to be none-other than Jeremy’s Mission Impossible co-star Anil Kapoor. Anil along with the local crew fabricators, Dhruv and Sachin is a total hoot and we get to see the local flavor and the work culture of Indians. This episode is a lot more engaging and shows Jeremy’s emotional side as he meets young school children and talks to them and plays with them.  

The third episode, Mexico: Building a Mobile Dance Studio sees Jeremy get emotional as he and Rory travel to Los Cabos, Mexico, where they rebuild a city bus into a mobile dance studio for Casa Hogar, a nonprofit organization that offers full-time care and parenting to vulnerable kids who are unable to live with their families. Jeremy embarks on the mobile dance studio after learning that the kids at the center lost their dance studio in a hurricane and hence creates a new space for them to take dance classes and have recitals again. This episode, is pretty heartwrenching as Jeremy’s lead fabricator, Bender, recalls growing up in several foster homes and Jeremy recalls studying in a different school every year. They deliver the mobile dance studio with help from Latin superstar Sebastián Yatra but not before the crew, Jeremy and Rory put in their handprints on the vehicle.

In the last episode of Rennervations, Reno: Building a Mobile Recreation Center, Jeremy gives it back to his hometown of Reno, Nevada. He and Rory rebuild a shuttle bus into a mobile recreation center for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northern Nevada, a charity that creates and supports one-to-one mentor-mentee relationships between adult volunteers and local kids. They breathe new life into the bus by renovating it into a mobile recreation center fitted with a basketball hoop, soccer goal, computer lab and tables and chairs for hanging out. For this special gift to Reno residents, Jeremy ropes in his Marvel Cinematic Universe co-star Anthony Mackie.

Rennervations is a decent watch and shows how invested the Avengers star is in building community and doing something for the kids, not to mention his passion for decommissioned vehicles and breathing a new life into them. We also get to see the exquisite craft and the hard work that his team of fabricators and mechanics put into recreating the vehicles. The camaraderie between Jeremy and Rory is fun to watch and the two make a good and entertaining pair. They keep the excitement going and the docuseries is interspersed with some good humour, jolly repartee and fun banter. The show will soon premiere on Disney+Hotstar. 

PeepingMoon.com gives Rennervations, 3 Moons.