‘Eenie Meanie’ Review: A Flashy, Fun, Forgettable Mix of Action, Comedy and Crime (Hulu)

Back in the ’90s, movies like Eenie Meanie seemed to pop up in theaters almost monthly. Riding on the wave of Quentin Tarantino’s success, they revolved around quirky crooks, violent misadventures, and plots that leaned as much on absurdity as on crime. That’s exactly what you get here: a crime comedy about a young woman who left her reckless past behind but, inevitably, is pulled right back in.

Her name is Edie Meany—her nickname playing off the old children’s rhyme Eeny, meeny, miny, moe—and she’s played by Australian actress Samara Weaving, who feels like Margot Robbie’s edgier little sister. As a teenager, Edie worked as a getaway driver for her criminal parents, constantly skirting disaster. Fourteen years later, she’s settled into a quiet, respectable life as a helpful bank employee, determined to keep things simple.

Of course, that doesn’t last. When she finds out she’s pregnant, the father turns out to be John (Karl Glusman, of The Bikeriders and The Neon Demon), an old boyfriend she briefly reconnected with. Tracking him down to share the news, she instead finds him in serious trouble—on the run from thugs intent on killing him. A frantic escape (which, at one point, involves Randall Park crammed into a box) leads them to a local mob boss, played with deadpan menace by Andy García. John owes him a hefty sum, and the only way out is to rob a casino contest worth three million dollars. The catch? He needs a getaway driver. Which means Edie.

What follows leans into full-on heist movie territory, complete with a ragtag crew, double-crosses, and botched plans. Alongside the action, the film tries to inject some human drama—Edie and John’s fraught history, her tense relationship with her father (Steve Zahn, fitting right in with the film’s retro crime-movie vibe), and the looming question of whether this accidental family might somehow work out.

Shawn Simmons’s film strengths lie less in its originality than in its pace. The dialogue is snappy and sarcastic, the violence sudden and chaotic, the humor broad but effective. It wears its B-movie DNA proudly, even if the genre doesn’t exist today the way it did in the direct-to-video and mid-budget heyday of the ’90s. By the end, Eenie Meanie doesn’t reinvent the crime thriller or add much to the tradition it borrows from, but it does what it sets out to do: deliver a wild, fast, slightly disposable ride that fans of pulpy crime stories will be happy to hop on—at least for a couple of hours.