Dumb Money
Craig Gillespie’s “Dumb Money” is about the major and minor players of the GameStop short squeeze in 2021, and it tells their story in a way that reveals the asymmetrical nature of the financial market. But above all else, this movie is fun. It will be compared to Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” but it doesn’t directly teach us that capitalism is bad, which works in its favor. The script by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo is held together by an extremely likeable ensemble cast, and the director of “I, Tonya” finds a pace that isn’t as frenetic as other movies trying to do that McKay Thing. It is a relatively tight, no nonsense comedy at 100 minutes long that reminds us: even when we think we’re playing the game, they’ve got a different rulebook.
Paul Dano anchors the film as Keith Gill aka Roaring Kitty an unknown quantity on Reddit channel wallstreetbets who became huge when he engineered a short squeeze against GameStop. Basically what happened was major hedge funds made billions off companies failing; they bet big on places going under so they could profit from people losing their jobs and homes. Gill told all his followers mostly young folks to buy GME stock, which then exploded many times over its initial low buy-in price. He went paper millionaire overnight but held onto the stock, billionaires were furious; day-trading app RobinHood colluded with a hedge fund owner to stop trading on certain stocks for one day (the app’s tagline. We are all investors). In an open market you have to buy or sell something somebody here cheated. There were Congressional investigations after this movie ended (one allegedly suggested Gill knew about some stuff ahead of time because how did dumb money lose them billions?).
Based on a book by Ben Mezrich (who also wrote the non-fiction book that became “The Social Network”), Blum and Angelo paint this across a pretty wide canvas. In Boston there’s Gill, his wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley), and his brother Kevin (Pete Davidson), who can’t believe his nerdy sibling is now this kind of star. They also highlight a few investors a nurse named Jenny (America Ferrera), a GameStop clerk named Marcus (Anthony Ramos), a couple of college kids named Harmony (Talia Ryder) and Riri (Myha’la Herrold). On the other side of things, Seth Rogen nails the spoiled idiocy of Gabe Plotkin, Vincent D’Onofrio sketches the eccentric Steve Cohen, Sebastian Stan bumbles through RobinHood head Vlad Tenev’s arc; Nick Offerman glares the relatively vile Ken Griffin into cinematic existence.
It’s an excellent cast, managed by Gillespie without allowing anyone to hog the spotlight with overacting. These kinds of sprawling pieces often fail to come together under one vision, but that’s not the case with “Dumb Money”: Gillespie supplies all the necessary information and character beats. Still, it could stand more of the latter, sometimes this movie doesn’t know enough about itself or at least about those unique dynamics which brought this seismic financial shift to life. Yes, it’s not that movie but there is a version of “Dumb Money” that digs deeper still, one that asks harder questions about inequity and forces involved in the event (such as how did pandemic affect things: everyone was home watching Roaring Kitty clips trying to take back some control over their chaotic world). And you have to wonder whether there would’ve been more outrage if 2020-21 hadn’t been one crisis after another for “Dumb Money” to compete with on headlines alone.
But what makes “Dumb Money” so good is it never gets too speechy about capitalism being evil. There’s a worse version of this where the film talks down or even worse expects you to care deeply about retail trading subculture. Gillespie avoids both these traps; he keeps dramedy fluid without resorting melodrama. This is when regular folks finally drill hole into dam built by society’s ancient institutions yes, they’ll patch up again but we’re not gonna stop drilling.
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