Citadel Honey Bunny review: Samantha Ruth Prabhu explodes off the screen in Raj and DK’s clunky series

Unlike many female stars who get to do a bit of action on the side, Samantha’s Honey leaps on track, and stays on it, even when the series itself wavers: this prequel to the unimpressive 2023 Citadel starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas, is much better than the director duo’s slack misfire, Guns and Gulaabs. But the zing of the Family Man editions is missing, essentially because the very Raj and DK mix of movie buff humour-and-seriousness, comedy-and-action becomes clunky and forced in bits, which results in the show working in fits and starts.

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Honey and Bunny meet cute in their past lives on a film set — she has come to Mumbai to become an actress, he is a daring stunt-man — and then, it rolls over into a dark direction, which ends in Honey becoming an ‘agent’, just like Bunny. It’s not as if Varun Dhawan doesn’t try getting into his character — he does get several sequences showing off his derring-do — but he is up against a performer who is miles ahead in the can-you-make-me-believe-in-all-this-preposterousness-stakes.

The generic word ‘agent’ seeps into Baba’s (Kay Kay Menon) deep state surveillance-and-arms agency, staffed by a bunch wearing sideburns and bell-bottomed pants (not as attention-grabbing look-at-me, we’re in the 90s as Guns and Gulaabs, but very much part of the scenery), who don’t seem to have any of the underlying toughness that spies should. As befits a top Bollywood star, Varun Dhawan’s Rahi aka Bunny leads, with a quick-on-his-feet back-up (Shivankit Singh Parihar) and jokey computer nerd (Soham Majumdar; are there any other kind?), but this trio could be any trio in any other spy story, and being able to stand out is truly the thing that separates grain from chaff in a mediaverse stuffed with spies-and-criminals.

We do get a strand which is distinctive, and instantly our focus sharpens. A respected Indian scientist at a Belgrade convention is carrying a device which can save the world: even though the device-which-can-save-the-world is as as old as Bond, if not older, the play between said scientist (Thalaivasaai Vijay) and Honey is fresh enough, but then the plot dives into the dull interplay between another set of players, with Simran as leader and Sikander Kher as chief follower. Glowering Baba acolyte Saqib Saleem, competing with Bunny for the former’s affections, is given an inexplicable lone ranger strand. Dullness deepens.

It is left to Honey, on the run with ‘beti’ Nadia — named after her mother’s favourite actor Fearless Nadia, and played by Priyanka in her grown-up avatar — to come to our rescue. Which, of course, she does. Handsomely. So where does that leave Varun Dhawan? Why, readying for his Terminator avatar, which looks as if it is going to kick-start the next season. But in this one, it is Samantha all the way.

Cast: Varun Dhawan, Samantha, Kay Kay Menon, Kashvi Majmundar, Simran, Sikrander Kher, Saqib Saleem, Soham Majumdar, Shivankit Singh Parihar, Thalaivaasai Vijay, Parmeet Sethi
Director: Raj and DK
Rating: 2.5 stars