Everyday people flip the script on Wall Street and get rich by turning GameStop into one of the world's hottest companies. In the middle of everything is Keith Gill, a regular guy who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock. When his social media posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets wealthy -- until the billionaires fight back and both sides find their worlds turned upside down.
Dumb Money is directed by Craig Gillespie who directed Cruella, Lars and the Real Girl, I, Tonya, Fright Night (2011) and a few others. The movie is based on the book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich and chronicles the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021.
The whole GameStop short squeeze was absolutely insane in just about every way, from the way it happened to what transpired during the whole thing. It was primarily triggered by users of a subreddit called r/wallstreetbets which is part of Reddit. The whole event was spread like wildfire on the internet and for awhile you could not escape the news of the short squeeze, so naturally it was only a matter of time before a movie about it was made.
Dumb Money is a biopic about the event itself and some of the people involved Paul Dano playing Keith Gill the person the movie focuses mostly around, which leads me to say that the cast is quite great. Dano as always does quite a fantastic job here and really captures this sort of role quite well. Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, Anthony Ramos, Myha'la Herrold and Seth Rogen are all quite solid as well. Some of them definitely get more to do than others, but as a group with their talent combined they really hit it out of the park.
I do have to give the movie some sort of credit that it did handle the topic of COVID actually quite well. Part of Keith Gill (Paul Dano) and his brother Kevin Gill (Pete Davidson) story is that they are suffering from a tragedy that happened because of COVID, the way it's handled really comes off surprisingly raw and actually makes the viewer feel for the two. It's some of the best moments of the movie that I wish the movie used the same sort of energy for it's other characters.
Because truth be told a lot of the other characters are very underdeveloped, despite having several different plot lines a lot of the characters particularly Anthony Ramos really get the short end of the stick when it comes to development. Which really defeats the purpose of this whole "normal class vs the elite" type of angle, part of what made the whole GameStop situation so interesting is it was a bunch of internet users versus the elite and Wall Street. That sort of feels lost here when a lot of the characters are not given the development they need.
Despite that however I still do think this is a decently fun movie with some great acting, it definitely leaves a lot to be desired and maybe should have waited a few years before being quickly made. But for people who really can't understand the whole subreddit or Wall Street in general I do think this is a decent movie.
Dumb Money is available on all VOD platforms.
6/10 C+
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