Eenie Meanie

A reformed teenage getaway driver is dragged back into her criminal past when a local mobster, and former employer, forces her to take part in a big heist in order to save the life of her chronically unreliable dipshit ex-boyfriend.

Edie is trying really hard to start a new life after having renounced her delinquent past. She’s weary and miserable and barely getting by with her meager check from her shitty bank teller job, and she's exhausted from spending her nights studying economics at the local community college. But while getting checked out at the hospital in the aftermath of being caught in a violent bank robbery, Edie discovers that she’s currently pregnant.

And that’s when everything goes to hell.

There’s only one possible person who could share the responsibility for the bun now baking in her oven, and it’s the world’s biggest idiot, her ex-boyfriend, John. John is a perennial fuck-up, a junkie, an ex-con, and a generally unreliable fool. A lifetime criminal, much like Edie, most of the time the reason John’s been caught by the cops is because he’s stupid. Despite this, even though she’s been trying… unsuccessfully… to stay away from him, Edie still loves the moron.

So, when Edie goes to tell John that she’s pregnant, effectively blowing up every other facet of her life, she finds him at the mercy of murderous thugs. It turns out that, once again, John has done something really stupid, forcing Edie to save him, which then leads to a cascade of stupidity, all of which culminates in John owing some very bad people a whole bunch of money. Fortunately, that person is Nico, a local crime boss, and he has a soft spot for Edie, who used to work for him as a wheelman. Unfortunately, when Edie takes John to Nico to try to work something out, Nico instead offers her an ultimatum.

Nico’s got a job, see, a big casino heist involving a grand prize car with a trunk full of money, and he needs a getaway driver. So, if Edie wants to save John, all she has to do is get in that grand prize car with its trunk full of money, and… get away.

Just when she thought she was out... yadda, yadda, yadda...

(zzzzz...zzzz...snore...)

The bastard children of Quentin Tarantino continue to haunt us after all these years, but to paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, they are still the lesser sons of a greater sire. Comparisons to Baby Driver are probably inevitable too, and while much like Eenie Meanie, that film also stumbled and failed, in this film, the car chases, that one would reasonably expect to be central to the story, fall far, far short of the pure adrenaline and incredible style of Edgar Wright’s film. Basically, Eenie Meanie is a big reach for the brass ring, an unfortunate miss, and then a very long and disappointing fall.

The worst part is that I just don’t buy the attraction between Edie and John. Not at all. While I accept the idea that he is supposed to be not just her Achilles Heel, but the weight around her shoulders that drags her under, even in their most tender of moments… they just don’t seem to have much chemistry.

Actually, I take that back, the worst part is the fact that the plan for the big heist is both too easy and too stupid, and clearly more of an afterthought, at least as far as the film is concerned, being that it is clearly much more interested in focusing on a different story. It’s too bad the film’s pretty decent stock idea was wasted.

Nope. I take that back too. The absolute worst part is that the film has a great opening... a GREAT opening... but then it cuts off suddenly, and we don't even get a good car chase out of it. That's bad enough, but when you add that poor decision to the fact that the other two car chases we do get are either lackluster in both the stunts and the filming, if not outright ludicrous–one takes place on an out-of-nowhere random fucking race track, all while the characters are in the midst of escaping the big heist too–makes me seriously question whether or not writer Shawn Simmons, in their directorial debut, even has the chops needed to shoot a good car chase. Judging by what's on screen, I'd say no, which would make having them be the director of a film that regularly features car chases (their very first time even doing the job too) be a pretty bad idea.

In the end, Ernie Meanie is a good illustration of why the basic heist story is still in such heavy rotation, and that’s because a good version of that basic story is always entertaining. Unfortunately, Eenie Meanie is just sad Tarantino wannabe style and unearned overly maudlin digressions, and I can’t tell if they did all that shit to pad out the otherwise unimpressive heist story that they couldn’t stretch into a feature length film, or if they just didn’t care about the heist, and tried to use it as a frame to hang their melodramatic tale of rotten love on. Either way, what could’ve been a fun story of a getaway driver pulling one last job, ends up a dull snoozer that lacks even one impressive driving sequence.

Maybe worst of all, the film just keeps going, taking forever to wrap up too. Ernie Meanie doesn’t have a full story, and it doesn’t have an ending. It's a big failure.

And that's disappointing. I was pulling for it.

Anyway, just to make things worse… as I’ve mentioned before, Samara Weaving is awesome, and often (as is the case here) she's the best thing in a bad movie, but my god, did you see what she wore to the Eenie Meanie movie premiere?

I was not prepared for how hideous that skirt was going to be…