Actor, musician, and app developer Jeremy Renner — the thinking woman’s Gerard Butler, the unthinking woman’s Daniel Craig — released an app Wednesday. It’s not clear who asked for this, or if there’s even a market for a mobile app devoted to the seventh-most-famous person in the Avengers movies, but let’s not get bogged down by silly questions like that. The app is called “Jeremy Renner,” just like him, and he describes it as “the main place I interact with my fans and share a deep look into my life.”
If you’ve ever seen the Kardashian-Jenner family’s suite of apps, it’s like that, except it’s about Jeremy Renner. Curious about what it’d be like to interact with Jeremy Renner and look deep into his life, I downloaded Jeremy Renner to my iPhone. This is my review of Jeremy Renner’s Jeremy Renner, graded on a scale of one to five Jeremy Renners.
App Presentation
The app icon is an image of Jeremy Renner flexing, constrained by chains, and staring imploringly into the camera. It looks like an Equinox ad, although Renner seems like a person who would prefer to sculpt his body by hitting a muddy truck tire with a sledgehammer in an open field rather than pay for the amenities and services offered by a high-end fitness club. Still, it’s a good icon, because it makes a person assume that opening this app will lead to something sensual. Strong start.
Opening the app pulls up yet another smoldering image of Jeremy Renner. It’s just of his face, so it’s not totally clear if he is flexing, though it’s safe to assume he is. His eyes have been lined along the inside, to emphasize their soulfulness.
Unfortunately, these initial images are the apex of the Jeremy Renner aesthetic experience, and they are false advertising, because there is nothing else even remotely erotic about the rest of the app. It looks like a cluttered, knockoff social network — all confusing icons and crowded, poorly designed landing pages — and it is difficult to navigate; I felt like I must’ve been missing part of the experience as I clicked around.
Jeremy Renner (the app) looks like it was designed in early 2011 by someone who hates Jeremy Renner (the person).
1/5 Jeremy Renners
App Name
This app is correctly named.
5/5 Jeremy Renners
App Functionality
An ideally functional Jeremy Renner app would perhaps allow me to stream the films of Jeremy Renner, browse an exclusive collection of images of Jeremy Renner, or maybe even submit a question to a Q&A box helmed by Jeremy Renner. It would also provide an educational biography of Jeremy Renner, like how he starred in a movie with Julia Stiles, but not Save the Last Dance. Those are just some ideas I would suggest at a pitch meeting for a Jeremy Renner app called Jeremy Renner.
But I’m not sure there was ever a pitch meeting for this app. I think Jeremy Renner heard about apps from someone (Ben Affleck? Amy Adams?) and thought to himself, “I should get one.” Then he called someone who called someone who called a guy who “knows computers” and here we are. Alternatively, it is possible that Jeremy Renner does not know he has an app.
Beyond being a delivery system for a clip of Jeremy Renner singing a cover of the Animals’ “The House of the Rising Sun” — which plays when you launch the app — this thing is not functional. It’s basically useless unless you agree to pay for its many in-app upgrades. There’s a newsfeed where Jeremy Renner posts short, vague updates about his life, but many of the updates are locked, and the only thing you can do in response to the posts is post a comment yourself, which requires logging in through Facebook. You can amass stars through participating in this feed: The more stars you have, the higher up you move on the “fanboard,” which is a ledger of the people in this world who love Jeremy Renner the most. While new users automatically get 100 stars, getting a large influx after that requires making in-app purchases.
For Jeremy Renner superfans, there’s an option to “be a standout Jeremy Renner superfan,” which costs $2.99 a month. I signed up to be one such superfan, which allowed me to unlock several things that had been previously unavailable when I was a non-standout Jeremy Renner superfan. Like a video of Jeremy Renner sitting in a garden in a baseball cap, just bragging about how many fans he has. “There’s no way I could possibly get back to all the people on social media,” he says in the video. All right. Then he encourages fans to leave a comment about why they’re the best fan and promises to have lunch with the best commenter.
This is the extent of the premium content on Jeremy Renner’s app: Jeremy Renner advertising a contest.
Plus, there’s this:
So many questions. Like: Why is the official Jeremy Renner app linking to an unofficial Jeremy Renner website? Why is the app telling me to download the app? And who is coolshades?!
0/5 Jeremy Renners
Overall: 6/15 possible Renners
Conclusions
I started this app experience from a place of happy ignorance about the life, career, and interests of Jeremy Renner. One of the main reasons I wanted to download Jeremy Renner (the app) is because I wanted to learn more about Jeremy Renner (the person). Unfortunately, this app provides little in the way of new information about Jeremy Renner, except:
- 14,800 Jeremy Renner stars sell for $99.99.
- Jeremy Renner likes the band the Animals, maybe too much.
- Jeremy Renner owns a black baseball cap.
- Jeremy Renner is a braggart.
The main takeaway from all of this? Jeremy Renner’s Jeremy Renner app is the Jeremy Renner of apps.