HEIST comedy-thriller Eenie Meanie is a poor man’s Baby Driver with idle Fast & Furious notions that lead all the way to the repair shop.
Director Shawn Simmons doesn’t get too revved up, and proceedings prove far more Chitty Chitty Bang Bang than Death Proof, despite his Tarantino-lite gangster bluster. Brimming over with repugnant dimwits and cliched hoodlum blowups straight out of an Elmore Leonard novel, Simmons’ feature film debut hits a major speed bump veryย early on and loses all sense of direction from there.
Now streaming on Disney+, Eenie Meanie is more a case of fleeing mediocrity straight down the middle of the road, than all out pedal to the metal high-octane speed demon. Simmons never manages to shift into high gear or give his audience a blast of va-va-voom, and instead rocks up in a rickety gas-guzzler that breaks down in the parking lot there in the opening scene.
The film stars Samara Weaving as Edie, a fine actress that plays a former teenage getaway driver who is dragged back into her unsavoury past when a previous employer Nico (Andy Garcia) offers her the chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend John (Karl Glusman).
John goes from one disaster to the next, and just as Edie is getting her life back on track, she’s once again drawn into the car-crash that is her former beau’s life, all while carrying his unborn child and desperate to escape her bumbling criminal associates, once and for all.
Eenie Meanie, as its childish title suggests, doesn’t take itself at all seriously, and turns out to be no more than an aimless road movie that is way too cringe for my tastes. Simmons sets the bar way too low, and doesn’t seem at all sure what he set out to achieve with this tiresome caper. His tank runs very low here on humour and gasoline.
(2/5)
