Silly Ranveer survival special is annoyingly fake
Starring: Ranveer Singh, Bear Grylls Director: Khuzema Haveliwala
THERE have been previous specials where British adventurer Bear Grylls has taken Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and Akshay Kumar, respectively, into the wild.
This recently released Netflix special sees him take Ranveer Singh to a Serbian forest and search for a rare flower. Along the way, he takes on supposedly daring deeds and throughout there is an interactive section, where the viewer can control what the actor does next. Although the idea of a popular Bollywood star going out into the wilds with a survival expert to test his levels of endurance and race against the clock, seems like an interesting idea, it is impossible to escape how fake the whole special is, from the very first frame.
The fact audiences can choose the route illustrates that there is no race against time, and they filmed the various permutations, which removes any drama or adventure. While an interactive function may add an interesting element to dramatic shows or films, it does very little for a show like this and exposes how unreal it all is.
Apart from one zip line stunt, most of the stuff Ranveer does comes across as tame or fake, which kind of turns this one-off special into a pointless and self-indulgent exercise.
The other aspect many will find grating is the overacting that Ranveer Singh does right from the beginning and if you look carefully, it seems as if Bear Grylls looks irritated by it all. This includes throwing in random comedic Hindi lines.
Survivals shows are supposed to teach you something, but this focuses more on the histrionics of the actor, instead of being informative or inciteful. There are some scenic landscapes and moments where he talks about himself, but that isn’t enough to save this one-off piece of nonsense.
The only people who might take anything away from this would be diehard fans of Ranveer Singh, but even they might need a headache tablet by the time it finally ends.