Citadel Honey Bunny review: Varun Dhawan, Samantha try powering this dull series

Cast: Varun Dhawan, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Kay Kay Menon, Saqib Saleem, Kashvi Majumdar

The Indian spin-off of Prime Video’s American show Citadel, titled Honey Bunny, tracks the making of super-agent Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra). Though Priyanka is not in the series, it’s about her parents Honey (Samantha) and Bunny (Varun Dhawan) and they become Citadel agents. The little Nadia (Kashvi) is very much present throughout the series and shows early inclinations of being a tough girl.

While Honey is a struggling actor, Bunny is a stuntman who lives a double life of an agent under Baba (Kay Kay Menon). The time period is somewhere around 1992 and the play areas are Mumbai, Belgrade, Nainital and Bucharest. As expected, Baba and his ace killer KD (Saqib Saleem) are after Honey’s life even after eight years in 2000, but as the sentiments would go, Bunny returns to be the wall between death and life.

To begin with, it’s a template show—fast-paced spunky music, handheld camera, Hinglish dialogues and quirky character traits. Something Raj and DK have been doing in The Family Man, Farzi, Guns & Gulaabs and A Gentleman. Just as these projects can be ranked in descending order, Honey Bunny is the latest addition at the trail. Thanks to the star-power of Varun Dhawan and Samantha, it becomes bearable for six long episodes, otherwise it’s a dull, thoughtless parallel universe story that desperately needs tight editing, better scripting and more character depth.