Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Rennervations’ On Disney+, Where Jeremy Renner Renovates His Large Vehicles For Good Causes

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. Of course, one question came up at the time of the accident: Why does Renner own a massive vehicle like a snowcat? You’ll understand his penchant for large vehicles better once you watch his new Disney+ reality series, which was made prior to his accident.

RENNERVATIONS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Jeremy Renner walks into a studio with two chairs, and is surprised to be sitting down to be interviewed by his buddy Rory Millikin.

The Gist: 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.

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.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take Pimp My Ride, combine it with Extreme Makeover: Home Addition and add Renner’s wacky enthusiasm, and you have Rennervations.

Our Take: After Jeremy Renner had his snowcat accident earlier this year, we wondered just how he was in possession of such a large vehicle in the first place. Now we know; 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 plays out like two shows: One 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. AK’s battery was genius, for instance, and we would have been happier seeing more of that kind of stuff.

But a show like this needs the crew to have schtick, and they have a lot of it. Merri, for instance, has a deadpan manner that’s perfect for reality TV, and she’s also broken a ton of bones after almost dying in an auto accident. AK has dad jokes always at the ready. Bender is happier supervising than doing after doing for so many years. The rest of the crew also has their quips. It helps keep the show from being dry as soundproof foam.

The other show-within-a-show involves Renner’s somewhat unhinged enthusiasm 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). In a strange way, the press tour Renner has been on lately explaining the accident and his recovery has made us more appreciative of his personality, where he offers his help in these extreme ways. And he never comes off as some big movie star dropping in on these organizations for a photo op. A series of Renner and Millikin traveling the world and finding organizations like BASE would have been pretty entertaining even without the renovation part.

What Age Group Is This For?: There’s some bleeped language, but for the most part, this is the kind of show that could be watched by all ages.

Parting Shot: After the kids from BASE tour the new mobile studio, we see a during-credits scene where Renner jams with some of the teens.

Sleeper Star: Millikin is absolutely there for comic relief, but these kinds of shows always need that guy who doesn’t know how to do anything but keeps everyone in stitches.

Most Pilot-y Line: As much as we like Vanessa Hudgens, was she really necessary to get the kids to buy into this cool mobile studio? It’s a mobile studio! With instruments and high-tech equipment! Presented by Hawkeye!

Our Call: STREAM IT. Rennervations is a touch frantic and a little unhinged, but that just seems to be a reflection of its star’s personality. We love seeing the conversions and the organizations that will get these really fun new vehicles.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.