As a college student in the 2000s, I often found myself getting sucked into MTV’s Pimp My Ride. I couldn’t help it. Not only was it on all the damn time, it had its feel-good formula down to a science: Xzibit’s boundless enthusiasm plus extravagant car modifications plus deserving participants made for a mood boost I generally found irresistible, whether I’d been looking for one or not. Still, when word got around that the experience hadn’t been all it was cracked up to be behind the scenes — that some of the heartwarming personal stories had been demeaning exaggerations, and that the upgrades were often barely functional — it came as little surprise. This was Hollywood. Of course it had all been for show.
I thought of Pimp My Ride often as I made my way through Rennervations, which likewise combines cheery sentiment and insanely tricked-out vehicles — as well as the nagging sense that these projects probably look better on camera than they work in real life. The Disney+ show’s aim is certainly much nobler; each of its projects are designed to help charities, and if featuring them here brings them more donations or volunteers, perhaps that’s accomplishment enough. But as a piece of entertainment, it falls far short of the charm needed to turn good intentions into good TV.
Rennervations
The Bottom Line
There are worse ways for a star to use his platform, but surely better ones too.
Each of the four episodes of Rennervations begins the same way. First, there’s a four-minute interview/montage in which host Jeremy Renner lays out the premise of his show while relentlessly ragging on Rory Millikin, his more personable executive producer and sidekick. Then there’s a preview of the specific episode to come, and then a minute-long credits sequence. All in all, six or seven of each installment’s 45 minutes are spent establishing what it is we’re about to watch, though the concept isn’t actually that complicated.
In each program, Renner meets with a children’s charity to frown thoughtfully as they explain their mission, and then selects one of his 200+ decommissioned public service vehicles to be transformed by his builders into whatever each organization needs — a mobile music studio for the afterschool program BASE Chicago, or a water purification system for a community in India, or so on. (Why Renner owns 200+ decommissioned public service vehicles to begin with is one of many Jeremy Renner-specific questions raised by Rennervations, along with “Holy shit, how much do you think Jeremy Renner’s incredible mountainside mansion costs?” and “Did he just say the guy who built his in-home music studio also lives in said studio?)
Per Renner in the opening interview, the goal here is to “make actionability and thoughtfulness of others cool as [bleeped, because Disney].” And there are bits of Rennervations that do look kind of neat, in certain lights. It’s mildly interesting to watch the team of fabricators problem-solve their way through Renner’s wildly ambitious ideas, and sweet to see their easy rapport as they joke among themselves or help each other out. A few moments are downright touching, as when lead fabricator Rob “Bender” Park gets choked up thinking about how much it means to him to be able to build a new dance studio for the Casa Hogar children’s home in Mexico, having himself grown up in a series of group homes.
But much more of Rennervations is simply boring. Despite his magnetism as an actor, Renner is uneasy as a host. I don’t particularly doubt him when he gets emotional about how “inspired” he is by his love of kids, but whatever passion he harbors for this specific endeavor does not translate to his appearance onscreen. His conversations with organizers and kids seem like the heavily stage-managed PR opportunities they are. His chats with the celebrity pals he calls up to “help deliver” each vehicle (which typically just entails showing up and shaking a few hands) are somehow less convincing still. Anthony Mackie and Anil Kapoor at least exude enough charisma to outshine Renner’s stiltedness, but Vanessa Hudgens might as well be reading off AI-generated cue cards when she tells Renner that “Kids are, obviously, they are our future” and that “Music is everything.” If that’s the sort of sparkling repartee that made it into Rennervations, how mind-numbing was the stuff that got cut?
After a while, I got to wondering about other things too. Like why each project has been squeezed into an intensely stressful four-week deadline when there’s no obvious reason why Renner (or Disney) couldn’t have given the crew six or eight or 12 weeks to get things done right. Or whether any of these cars might need something more than cosmetic enhancements — if anyone in these episodes is checking to make sure the engines are running smoothly, we don’t see it. Or if it’s even very practical to load a bus with a super-heavy foldable dance floor that not only looks like kind of a pain to set up, but seems bound to require specialized maintenance or repair at some point.
Perhaps I’m just cynical; for all I know, a mobile rec center truly is a dream come true for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northern Nevada, or BASE Chicago’s music studio really will launch the next great pop star. There are probably worse ways for a celebrity to spend his social capital (and capital capital) than to draw attention to the scarcity of safe drinking water in rural India, or to the benefits of mentorship programs on underprivileged kids in America. But there might be better ways, too, than a star vehicle that does questionable things to the actual vehicles at its center, and few favors at all for its star.
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