MOVIE REVIEW: Dumb Money

Images courtesy of Sony Pictures

DUMB MONEY– 4 STARS

LESSON #1: THE MANY MEANINGS OF INSANE– The tagline of Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money call it an “insane true story.” That’s quite an ostentatious place to slap on the adjective label of “insane.” Going strictly by the dictionary and not every casual overused spin, the word is a coin toss between “severely mentally ill” and describing a decision or action that is “very foolish or excessive.”  

With a title like Dumb Money, which references a Wall Street slang term for a group of individual and non-institutional investors and their money, one has to ask if “insane” is talking about a dollar amount or a measurement of wisdom or choices. Well, you’re going to need that shiny quarter to flip. A thoroughly entertained viewer will be finger-pointing insanity occurring, in some shape or form, at nearly every turn of this off-the-cuff, firebrand movie.

Dumb Money pits commoner retail traders versus powerful hedge fund managers. The film introduces its characters with accompanying on-screen text that lists their names and net worth. The roll call starts with the millionaires and billionaires like Citadel’s Kenneth C. Griffin (TV legend Nick Offerman), Point72’s Steve Cohen (professional movie villain Vincent D’Onofrio), and Melvin Capital’s Gabe Plotkin (a slim and trim Seth Rogen). The informal meetings trickle down through college students (Myha’la Herrold of Bodies Bodies Bodies and Never Really Sometimes Always star Talia Ryder), a struggling nurse (Barbie’s America Ferrera), an ambitious GameStop clerk (Anthony Ramos of In the Heights), and all the way down to our lead protagonist Keith Gill, played by Paul Dano.

LESSON #2: THE STRENGTH OF THE EXCLAMATION “HOLY SHIT”-- Each of those characters (and more) punctuate their on-screen introductions with personalized utterances of “holy shit.” Now, much like the label of “insane,” that exclamation can go any number of ways with different degrees of volume and supporting emotionality. Is it shock? Anger? Intrigue? It’s hilarious to observe who in Dumb Money is dropping that curse for reasons of rejoice versus realizations of doom. Talk about a stage-setter!

In 2021, Keith Gill was working for MassMutual while creating an online presence with his Roaring Kitty YouTube channel, matching Twitter persona, and “DeepFuckingValue” username on the r/WallStreetBets subpage on Reddit. With full support of his wife Caroline (an overqualified Shailene Woodley) and the cheerleading of his derelict brother (Pete Davidson), Keith retreats to their basement, dons a red headband, tends to his cat, and fires up his double-monitor computer station. Educated, independent, and forthright with his research as a former broker, Gill actively promoted value investing to his followers and subscribers. He tabbed the retail store GameStop (GME) as a stock worth betting on for being undervalued. 

Much like the financial tales-of-the-tape for the characters, Dumb Money introduced GameStop sitting at $3.85, which is a level double its prior low when the hedge funds directed short sale action predicting failure. Cent by cent and dollar after dollar, the stock rose meteorically, spurring social media movements full of memes, GIFs, and hashtags and capturing national attention. The prospective gains of common folk buying into Gill’s advice– many using the Robinhood app– had the inverse effect on those hedge fund companies who bet on the company’s implosion, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. By the peak of the real-life (and the film’s condensed) course of investor attention and buying rallies, the price ballooned to 100 times that starting level. That’s the moment of all those aforementioned “holy shit” moments and the tipping point where questionable tactics and possible market chicanery would make a big story even bigger. 

LESSON #3: THE DRAMATIZED SHORT VERSION OF THE 2021 GAMESTOP SHORT SQUEEZE– Hopscotching between informative docufiction and troublemaking hero worship, Dumb Money shows off a Hollywood-friendly account of the 2021 GameStop short squeeze. Naturally, elements are shortened, shifted, skipped and/or embellished to make a compelling and peppy movie for a moviegoing public that is likely not going to be hip to all the stock market rules and lingo. Post-movie homework likely awaits you. Unlike The Big Short, which stops to humorously lecture viewers through the fourth wall, Craig Gillespie (Cruella and I, Tonya) lets the actors steer the roller coaster with their actions and reactions, and not with blunt terminology lessons.

From an engagement and storytelling standpoint, Dumb Money’s biggest strength is providing an ensemble of varying points of view. A more clinical approach would be to stick to Gill vs. The Man, but that’s a singular fight above most everyone’s head or care level. By offering a slice-of-life group of (likely fictitious) follower investors like Ferrara, Herrold, Ryder, and Ramos spread across the country and pinned with different personal risks in this whole ordeal, Dumb Money finds a very approachable appeal.

Gillespie used those multiple perspectives to his advantage to move matters along in a tight 104 minutes. Thanks to a bumping 2020s soundtrack of explicit lyrics and the slick editing of David Fincher’s regular editor Kirk Baxter, Dumb Money uses its energetic songs at the shared background of several montages that merge our characters of different social castes riding their financial waves. Showing their differences created an Us vs. Them slant in the movie that matched that of the recent history itself. Their “diamond hands” excitement and outrage becomes ours while watching, because, as we come to know, not everyone makes out like a bandit and not every wrongdoer gets their cumuppence.

That wide collection of citizens we root for and the ball-busting affability of Paul Dano and Pete Davidson (used perhaps for the first time in a movie with the perfect proportion of screen time and character guise beyond his stoner self) on the homefront bolster Dumb Money to be a crowd-pleaser as smashing as it is smart. Even before it makes it to its “run through lightning with your dick out” metaphor, this pandemic time capsule stands tall as a sure-fire message movie for its time.

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