‘Citadel: Honey Bunny’ review: The dulling of Raj & DK

Sometimes you get what you want, but it’s not what you need. Since 2018, Raj & DK have been on a creative streak. It began with Stree, a horror-comedy sleeper hit they wrote and produced. The following year, their first series, The Family Man, premiered on Amazon Prime; they show-ran and co-directed it over two seasons (a third is in the works). This was followed by two more shows, Farzi (on Amazon)—my favourite of their long-form work—and Guns & Gulaabs (on Netflix). With each success, the possibility that Hollywood would come calling seemed likelier.

When it did, it was royalty on the line. The Russo brothers—co-directors of four Marvel entries, among them the second- and sixth-highest-grossing films of all time—were executive producing an ambitious new spy series called Citadel in the pipeline for Amazon. Spin-offs had been planned in various countries, including India. Raj & DK were never going to say no. Perhaps they should have. 

Citadel: Honey Bunny opens in 2000, with Honey (Samantha Ruth Prabhu) and her eight-year-old daughter, Nadia (Kashvi Majmundar), in Nainital. We get only the briefest glimpse of a normal life as a sleepy Nadia is dropped off at school by her mother. In the marketplace soon after, Honey gets a whiff of danger and pages her daughter, who steals out of the school with the assurance of someone who’s been made to practice this very escape. As she waits in a movie hall for further instructions, the show rewinds, with little fuss, to 1992, where we’re introduced to a stuntman named Bunny (Varun Dhawan) and a younger Honey, a bit player trying to break into the Hindi film industry. 

Though it’s three years before Rangeela, Honey and Bunny feel like Mili and Munna in their supportive, bantering friendship (though maybe they’re both Mili, ambitious nobodies who want gaadi bangla, TV video, suiting shirting). Dhawan is charming as the large-hearted fall guy; I wish we had more time before Bunny's revealed to have a secret job—as a field operative for a shadowy organisation run by his mentor (Kay Kay Menon). Honey gets wind of his other life and, desperate for money, begs to be part of the team.

Though it’s a prequel to Citadel—in which the grown-up Nadia is played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas—Honey Bunny isn't saddled with a lot of intra-universe obligations. It’s surprising, then, to see how flavourless Raj & DK are here. The writing, with longtime collaborator Sita Menon, lacks their customary wit and structure. Instead of the profane blasts of Farzi or Guns & Gulaabs, we get bland Hollywoodspeak (when a dangerous piece of weaponry is introduced, at least four characters utter variations on “What if it falls into the wrong hands?”).

Honey Bunny also suffers in comparison with Raj & DK’s other spy series. The Family Man used specific political and geographical conflicts to ground its story. Honey Bunny is built around vague threats of world domination and the same kind of duelling spy agencies we encounter every month in some American film or series. Even the cultural markers—a video cassette of Shaan, Honey’s veneration of Fearless Nadia—feel off, specific but not pointed.

There is, as one has come to expect with Raj & DK, a lot of crisply directed action. Prabhu, who had a very physical role in season 2 in The Family Man, does her best work in these sequences, which includes a 10-minute one-r built around her. Sadly, nothing else she does is particularly compelling. It’s at best a professional turn, uninventive, devoid of personality. Her scenes with Dhawan never catch fire; Bunny shows much stronger feeling towards his fellow spies Ludo (Soham Majumdar, fine as the tech wiz who’s always being hurried) and Chacko (Shivankit Singh Parihar). Kay Kay Menon is a shadow of his unhinged gangster in Farzi; Sikander Kher—an actor tailor-made for prime Raj & DK rants—barely registers. 

When the duo came on board, Citadel hadn’t yet released. To be in production on a spin-off and see the flagship show—one of the most expensive of all time—crash and burn must’ve been deflating. It goes without saying Honey Bunny would’ve gotten a boost if the original series was a hit. But I also think the six-episode run (which Citadel had too) isn’t right for Raj & DK. They need time and space to flesh out their characters and storylines. Deprived of this, they’re made to look silly—like the big reveal in the last episode, easy to shrug off because we don’t really know or care about the people involved.  

It's probably unwise to extrapolate from a sample of one. Still, this does feel like a cautionary tale. As Hollywood franchises, both film and TV, look to branch out globally, Indian directors will start to turn up on lists of potential helmers. Honey Bunny shows how blockbuster franchise storytelling can dull even the liveliest of filmmakers.