Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Paul Dano, Sebastian Stan, Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio,
America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Shailene Woodley, Dane
DeHaan, Myha'la Herrold
Dumb Money takes its title from a disparaging term Wall
Street brokers apply to small time individual investors. In early 2021,
during the height of the pandemic, a lot of dumb money suddenly turned
into very smart money. Due to its selling of keyboards and mice, the
floundering video game chain GameStop was considered an essential service
and thus allowed to remain open while most retail stores were forced to
close. Its stock should have risen, but the powers-that-be on Wall Street
were counting on cashing in on the franchise's eventual failure. One man
threw a significant spanner in the financial works however.
Keith Gill (Paul Dano) was an investment nerd who ran a YouTube
channel under the name "Roaring Kitty" where he offered stock tips and cat
memes to his modest but committed following. He encouraged his viewers to
buy stocks in GameStop, which would increase their value. An app called
RobinHood gave non-experts easy access to acquiring such stocks, and soon
GameStop's stock was rising at a phenomenal rate. Of course, Wall Street
didn't like this, and so underhanded action was taken.
In the hands of director Craig Gillespie and writers Lauren Schuker Blum
and Rebecca Angelo, the "GameStop short squeeze" as it came to be
known is a fun tale of have-nots attempting to have a little more and the
haves who stood in their way. Each time a character is introduced their
current net worth is flashed up on screen. The first player we see is
investment officer Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), whose staggering NW
of $300 million is quickly dwarfed by hedge fund managers Steve Cohen (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Ken Griffin's (Nick Offerman) billions. At the other end of
the scale are students Harmony (Talia Ryder) and Riri (Myha'la Herrold), who have a negative NW in the tens of thousands thanks to the US's
notorious college fees; health worker Jennifer (America Ferrera);
and Marcos (Anthony Ramos), a disgruntled GameStop employee. The
latter group all buy into Gill's advice, and come to revere him like a
cult leader when they see their shares rise.
Despite the advice from all corners to sell their shares before they
drop, Gill and his devotees stand firm. "Hold" becomes the key word,
fuelling online memes and making the likes of Plotkin, Cohen and Griffin
sweat. Pressure is applied to RobinHood's founders Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan) and Baiju Bhatt (Rushi Kota) to stop giving the plebs
access to the stock.
When it comes to the stock market, and frankly anything involving
numbers, I'm as dumb as they come.
The Big Short
might as well have been dubbed in Romanian for all the sense I could make
of it, and even Margot Robbie in a bathtub couldn't clue me in. I expected
to find Dumb Money similarly confounding but thanks to
Gillespie's tabloid style, such worries proved unfounded. Gillespie and
his writers lay everything out in simple terms without having to rely on
gimmicks like bathing Aussie starlets. Perhaps its haves vs have-nots
dynamic is a little simplistic, but it works nonetheless. We find
ourselves rooting for Gill and his investors because who among us doesn't
warm to the idea of Wall Street taking a punch in the gut? The film
conveniently leaves out the investors who bought into this stock simply to
get rich, instead giving a bunch of put-upon workers and students with
noble intentions. The idea of holding is similarly portrayed as a battle
cry against capitalism, when in reality I'm sure it was more likely a case
of people getting increasingly greedy.
With its ensemble cast and pandemic background,
Dumb Money is oddly like a lighter cousin of Steven
Soderbergh's Contagion. There are scenes of deserted malls and lone masked riders on busses
that wouldn't be out of place in Soderbergh's apocalyptic drama, and it's
a stark reminder of what we all went through in that strange period.
But fear not, there's no misery here (well, except for some hedge funds),
as Gillespie injects the sort of humour he brought to his detailing of the
Tonya Harding scandal,
I, Tonya. I have to admit his punchable face put me off Pete Davidson when
he arrived on the scene (or maybe jealousy when he inexplicably pulled
Kate Beckinsale) but I've since warmed to him and now find him a genuinely
humorous presence. As Gill's stoner kid brother he gets most of the film's
best lines and acts as something of a bong-toting Greek chorus, asking the
sort of questions the audience is likely thinking. One of the movie's
funniest scenes has a team of advisors attempt to make Plotkin seem like
an everyman by hunting for a zoom call backdrop in his palatial home that
doesn't expose his obscene wealth.
Plotkin and co. are never cheaply portrayed as mustache twirling
villains, and in the case of Plotkin we feel some sympathy when we see the
concern on the face of his wife (Olivia Thirlby). Speaking of
wives, if Gill's real life wife was as supportive as the version played by
Shailene Woodley here, she deserves sainthood. In stark contrast to
the usual combative spouses in movies about misunderstood geniuses,
Caroline Gill is 100% with her hubby, even when they have tens of millions
that could be cashed out to instantly change their lives.
For a movie about stocks and shares, Dumb Money is more
thrilling than it has any right to be. I do worry that it could ironically
serve as free advertising for services like RobinHood, as it makes the
process of buying and selling stocks seem genuinely exciting.
