Dumb Money Review

If Dumb Money is the evil root, let the hedge fund managers shine the coops. Forever and ever, Wall Street has been run by those at the top. These entities, run by people such as Melvin Capital CEO Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), Citadel CEO Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman), and Point72 CEO Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio) have thrived on the backs of the poor, shorting stocks and then buying them back at a lower price while keeping the difference once sold back to the seller, often building insane wealth. Even Robinhood co-CEO Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan), whose company pledges democratizing access to the stock market, are more like the entities they claim to not be.

All it really takes for an uprising is the right climate. 2020 provided it for Keith Gill (Paul Dano), a financial analyst from humble beginnings who takes a substantial interest in day trading. The stock that catches his eye is the sinking GameStop, hit hard by the pandemic accelerating a trend of lessening foot traffic over the years. He likes the stock, and decides to invest heavily in it along with posting YouTube videos and Reddit posts explaining his whys. Improbably, others buy into his outlook, and soon, the belief in GameStop stands to make a lot of coin to the nobodies, if they can just hold a little bit longer.

When it comes to an intriguing true story, it is rare that Hollywood’s glitz and glamour production machine gets beat to the punch and isn’t the first entity to release a movie based on said compelling subject. Yes, I’m using “Hollywood” a bit too specifically here, but I think one gets the gist. Nevertheless, that is the case when it comes to Dumb Money and the insane GameStop story of the little guys trying to stick it to big business.

The fast-paced nature of the GameStop craze lends itself perfectly, for better and worse, to the recent style of director Craig Gillespie. Similar in ways to I, Tonya and Cruella, there’s no lack of energy. The depiction of early coronavirus days and the peek-ins of who takes it seriously and who chooses not to is subtle commentary. Sensory overload is an apt description at times in the film. That’s not totally a bad thing, as it feels like it’s the effect Gillespie and editor Kirk Baxter are aiming for with the in-your-face nature of Reddit, a key ignitor to this story with its out there humor.

At other times though, Dumb Money is way too loud, literally and figuratively with its needle drops. Specifically, the first third of the feature is exhausting to get through with the onslaught of Cardi B, Meat Loaf, Megan Thee Stallion, and Kendrick Lamar (why the latter’s 2017 track in “Humble” is featured prominently in film recited by characters living in 2020 is a bizarre choice). It does settle in a bit but it takes some time.

Adapted from the 2021 book The Antisocial Network, Dumb Money’s screenplay co-written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo generally sticks to the known facts of how matters played out in this story, deviating only when it comes to creating composite characters that didn’t exist played by America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, Myha’la Herrold, and Talia Ryder, with the latter two’s combined story of young college students dipping toes into the stock market as second generation retribution seeking for their families’ prior bad luck against corporations being the weakest through line.

However, it isn’t like the bulk of the rest are super engaging, either. We’re along for the ride with these characters, but halfhearted snapshot background info dumps keep them at arms length due, so their net gains and losses feel inconsequential. Additionally, there’s too much of a tendency to paint the Reddit and larger Internet community as the pure babyface good guys, whereas in reality like many things there were many shades of gray within the groups. As such, Dumb Money comes off as a pretty bare bones story of David vs. Goliath.

All that in mind, Dumb Money is watchable in large part due to the dynamic Dano. Gill is not his best written character he’s played, yet the actor infuses the figurehead with sly charisma and a steadfast moral compass code. The movie is at its best when he’s front and center or when interacting with Shailene Woodley, any of the CEOs, or even, yes, Pete Davidson.

Many times, a common and consistently rightful complaint about these types of movies is that they’d be better served as a documentary. It’s hard to argue that fact when it comes to Dumb Money...especially since nearly every major streaming service has a documentary covering the very same material here. Dumb Money isn’t without its value, but it’s somewhere between diamond hands and paper hands.