Jeremy Renner has been making the press rounds lately to update fans on his recovery from a near-fatal accident earlier this year, where he almost got crushed to death by a snowcat he owns. This show tells you about his love for large vehicles.
In Rennervations, the actor picks from among his massive collection of large vehicles and renovates the vehicle to donate to a good cause. In episode 1, he takes an old tour bus he bought and makes it into a mobile music studio for The BASE Chicago, which helps the city’s youth stay away from gangs and violence by getting them interested in sports, academics and music.
Renner doesn’t do this alone, of course, and Millikin, despite being hilarious, doesn’t do much around the workshop, either. No, Renner has a crack team of fabricators, engineers and designers to convert the bus into a soundproof studio with space for kids to hang out and write music before recording and mixing their tunes. This includes gutting the bus, putting in walls, soundproofing, and dealing with issues like providing HVAC and copious amounts of power without generating a lot of noise.
Bender, a fabricator who leads the build crew, has never had to deal with soundproofing before, so Renner gets the sound engineer who built a studio for him to help out. AK is tasked with creating ample power that doesn’t involve lots of noisy fans and generators; he creates a massive power plant using a series of car batteries plugged into inverters.
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While this is going on outside of Reno, Renner and Millikin visit BASE in Chicago to meet with the kids who have made music more than just something the noodle around with. He then recruits Vanessa Hudgens to join him when the bus is brought to Chicago, knowing that the teens there will identify more with her than with him.
Buying up massive vehicles and rehabbing them is one of Renner’s hobbies. He’s also a fair musician, and music has been something that has centered him his entire life. So to see both of his passions come together in the first episode of Rennervations was pretty cool to watch.
Rennervations is a renovation show, with his highly skilled team of fabricators transforming these vehicles in a relatively short period of time. In subsequent episodes, they’ll make a delivery truck into a mobile water treatment facility, a city bus into a dance studio and a shuttle bus into a rec center. That work is fascinating, and at points during the episode, we wanted to see more of it, including seeing how the crew was able to work around some challenges.
The show is also about Jeremy’s personality. Renner’s somewhat unhinged enthusiasm is infectious as he goes and visits the place where he’ll donate the vehicle, bouncing off of Millikin and talking to the designated celebrity friend he’ll bring along to the location (Hudgens in Chicago, Sebastian Yatra in Los Cabos, Mexico, Anthony Mackie in Reno and Anil Kapoor in India).
Unhinged in parts but mostly engaging.
Streams on Hulu and Disney+ and Hotstar
