Eenie Meanie (2025)
★½ — Eenie Meanie (2025)
There is a particular sub-genre of action comedy that works best when it leans into its own absurdity: the reluctant-criminal-dragged-back-in story, where the fun comes from watching a reasonably sensible person deal with a world that has completely lost the plot. Eenie Meanie, released in 2025 through 20th Century Studios and Reese Wernick Productions, positions itself squarely in that territory. The premise involves a woman with a teenage past as a getaway driver who finds herself pulled back into that world when a former employer makes her an offer she cannot easily refuse, the catch being that the life she has to save belongs to her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend. On paper, that is a workable setup: a little Baby Driver energy, a fish-out-of-water comic angle, enough moral ambiguity to keep things interesting. The tagline, "He's her biggest blind spot," even hints at something pleasingly self-aware about romantic bad judgement. Whether the film delivers on any of that promise is another matter entirely.
The director is Shawn Simmons, working here with what is, by any reasonable measure, a genuinely capable ensemble. Samara Weaving takes the lead, and her track record across horror, action and comedy suggests she is well suited to the kind of physically and tonally demanding work a film like this should require. Weaving has built a reputation for throwing herself into genre material with real commitment, which made her casting feel like a reliable indicator of quality. Alongside her, Karl Glusman plays the hapless ex at the centre of the chaos, while Andy Garcia brings his particular brand of weathered authority to what appears to be a senior figure in the criminal world. Steve Zahn and Jermaine Fowler round out a supporting cast that, on balance, looks considerably more interesting than the average action comedy can usually attract. The film runs at 106 minutes, a length that should be perfectly manageable for a crime caper with comedic ambitions, provided the material keeps moving. For fans of action comedy as a genre, it is worth noting that the form has had some genuinely strong entries in recent years, and I have covered a few of them here, including Hardcore Henry and Mad Max: Fury Road, both of which demonstrate what committed, kinetic filmmaking in this space can look like when the energy is right.
The action comedy genre lives or dies on momentum, and the best examples of it, whatever their budget, find ways to make even quiet scenes feel like they are building towards something. Films that blend crime plotting with comedy need a particular kind of tonal control, the ability to be funny without deflating genuine tension, and tense without forgetting to be entertaining. Eenie Meanie arrives with enough genre credentials and enough recognisable faces to suggest it understood that balance was needed. Whether Simmons and the production actually achieved it is what any fair review has to reckon with honestly. It is, at 106 minutes, not an especially long film, but length and pace are very different things, a point that crime comedies in particular tend to prove one way or the other.
Eenie Meanie is a baffling, poorly made film that somehow wastes Samara Weaving, a talented actress who deserves so much better. From the title and the vague marketing, I thought this might be a trashy, fun car chase thriller, something wild, pulpy, maybe even a little dumb-fun. Instead, it’s a lifeless, poorly written slog with almost no action, terrible pacing, and a lead performance that feels completely lost. And yeah, I hate to say it, but Weaving just… can’t carry it. Her delivery is flat, her emotional segments don’t land, and she’s given zero to work with, just clichéd lines and a character with no arc. The film pretends to be tense, like some gritty chase thriller, but nothing happens for long stretches. The tension never builds, the stakes never feel real, and the few action scenes are underlit, badly choreographed, and over before they start. It’s not stylish, not clever, not even so bad it’s good. It’s just… bad. Like a straight-to-VOD film that somehow scraped together enough cash for a minor theatrical whisper. I don’t know who greenlit this, but it’s a waste of time, budget, and talent. Avoid unless you’re trapped on a plane with nothing else.
That feeling of watching something fail to be even enjoyably bad is, for me, genuinely one of the more frustrating cinema experiences going. A film that is wild and stupid and aware of itself can be a brilliant night out, as I have argued before when writing about Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and others that understood their own register. Eenie Meanie does not even manage that. The waste of a cast this capable, Weaving included, is the part that lingers longest, the sense that with a sharper script and a director who trusted the material, there was a decent film somewhere in the premise. Instead, it joins a quietly depressing pile of genre films that looked fine on a poster and dissolved on contact. My advice: spend the 106 minutes on something that actually wants to be watched.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2025-09-08
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Eenie Meanie (2025) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu
Physical: Amazon US
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