Skip to main content

The Nonsensically Grave Overtures of Eenie Meanie

There are several problems with the movie Eenie Meanie, starting with the fact it is called “Eenie Meanie”. Another big one though is that in spite of that puerile title it endeavours to take itself, for the most part, seriously; like a genuine, dramatic crime movie with a pair of heroes who might be a latter day Bonnie and Clyde. More power to debut writer-director Shawn Simmons, who does seem honestly compelled by these characters and their personal stakes, but his tonally counter-intuitive title and character -which seem positively winking in nature- set the movie on a bad disjointed path right from the get. And I think even he knows it, consciously dropping “Eenie Meanie” from the most critical sequences. Not that it particularly helps them.
For its silly juvenile sound, the “Eenie Meanie” moniker comes from a rather tragic situation -bestowed on a girl Edie as a young teenager by a gangster as well as her drug addict parents, exploiting her as a getaway driver for criminal jobs. As an adult, played by Samara Weaving, that trauma is largely behind Edie, who has been through foster homes and even gotten an education -though is unable to shake off that world entirely mostly due to her on-off relationship with an unstable, impulsive drug dealer John (Karl Glusman), whom she suddenly learns she is expecting a child by. In tracking him down and realizing the depth of the trouble he is in, she finds herself drawn back into the criminal fold of her former handler Nico (Andy Garcia), who recruits the two of them for a heist.
The irony of Andy Garcia orchestrating a heist is one of the few self-aware touches that is legitimately a little bit charming, in a cutesy kind of way. The other occurrences of Ocean's Eleven being evoked certainly are not, in the gang planning the job together and the outline of the actual caper set to the same kind of jazzy music, just in a far less impressive casino. Not the kind of details that are clever or inspired generally, but in these moments the movie is also clearly trying to punch above its weight aesthetically. It is posturing though, and feels out of step with the movie's tendencies otherwise. Much as the plot may involve a heist, the tone and drama way more resembles a conventional crime film, without much of the fun or humour that usually accompanies the heist genre -it doesn't need to necessarily, but Simmons hasn't the experience to pull off a successful experiment otherwise.
The movie is rather shoddily constructed in places as well. The editing especially is notably frenzied. Perhaps Simmons shot too much coverage or perhaps too many takes were unusable, but you can see the stitches of multiple takes haphazardly glued together to fulfil a scene and on a couple occasions -such as a street argument between Edie and John in the first act there are cuts to duplicate frames. But we see elsewhere that Simmons isn't a director afraid to hold on a shot, most starkly where he illustrates Edie and a naked John's hasty escape from violent creditors through John's slum apartment complex almost entirely in a oner. And it's not a bad choice, conveying the chaos and urgency of the moment and keeping to a relatively stable spacial geography. But Simmons lets much of the rest of the movie around it be bland, even with efforts at more dramatic lighting and compositions.
Against this, the story attempts to keep its heart with the relationship between Edie and John, toxic and complex as Edie routinely finds herself by degrees allured to and repelled by John, who is invested in the relationship but not enough so to change for Edie in spite of a few contradictory overtures. It is another thing that on paper reads as highly compelling, a difficult dynamic with real nuance and depth for a movie called Eenie Meanie. And Weaving and Glusman play it pretty well ultimately. Weaving’s performance is a little strained and awkward in some places, particularly where she has to get highly emotional in this accent (also the script gives her some awful lines from time to time), but for most of the movie she finds a workable groove, and especially towards Glusman plays authentically the whirlwind of emotions he brings out of her. She enters into this job to save his life, much as she claims not to want to be part of it anymore. For his part, he’s fairly solid too -it’s a good showcase for Glusman who has had relatively few roles of this calibre.  That sense of history and co-dependence is communicated, and fleeting moments of seemingly earnest romance, as the possibility of reformation and a dependable future together raises its head. But skepticism remains in play too, not over an honesty of feeling but in how John will go about reacting to and expressing it. You understand why it takes so long into the movie for Edie to reveal her pregnancy to him.
But the twists and turns in this relationship and what ultimately becomes of it are very shallow digressions masquerading as clever or revealing. Simmons wants it to appear as subversive, or perhaps realist, when what it actually comes across as is indecisive and a bit narratively cheap to undercut the pretenses of these characters’ evolution for more reckless stupidity. And nothing much matters going forward from that point except to give Weaving a chance at an admittedly strongly performed monologue. There is a heaviness to all of this stuff in the last act, including a mediocre heart-to-heart between Edie and her estranged father played by Steve Zahn, and even Marshawn Lynch -who in other movies has proven quite comedically adept- has to play as an honest threat, in which capacity he is quite dull. The heist itself, for its brevity, brings back a little bit of a lighter tone, and features a pretty decent set-piece involving Edie applying her getaway skills to a show car, but the repercussions of it dispense with any of that energy.
What is left is a largely mundane crime movie that just happens to have a caper as part of the conceit and a modestly interesting central relationship performed well but let down by the script’s whiplash and the inconsistent filmmaking. The title does hurt this movie’s efforts at serious credibility too, but that could have been made up for by a different set of choices in the movie itself. Clearly, Simmons’s interests were with Edie and John, and yet he never narrows the scope enough on them or in the right ways. Weaving has a couple more scenes to add to her demo reel, but Eenie Meanie hasn’t much value beyond that.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more