Dumb Money: Movie Review

Cast: Paul Dano, America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, Dane DeHaan, Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, Vincent D'Onofrio, Shailene Woodley, Pete Davidson
Director: Craig Gillespie

Less a The Big Short for Gen X and more a simple story of David vs Goliath, Dumb Money's take on the recent GameStop Wall Street tale is a solid if occasionally flawed retelling of a recent event.

Based on the book The Anti-Social Network, it's the story of Paul Dano's Keith Gill and how a short squeeze caused chaos on Wall Street. As a vlogger known as Roaring Kitty, Gill set the world alight by taking the stock in the company GameStop and telling people he liked it in a Reddit thread. Under a rush of everyday people investors, the stock rose and the bigwigs of the Venture capital world began to get angsty.

Dumb Money is a straightforward simplification of a story that dwells a lot on various everyday schlubs debating whether to buy stock.

There are perhaps too many people that Gillespie concentrates on outside of Gill, leading to a feeling of too much underwritten character work. There's a nurse, a pair of students in debt, a worker in GameStop itself, Gill's brother, Gill's parents and Gill's supportive wife. Then thrown into the mix are the big guys of Wall Street as well - it's a balancing act to be sure that predictably builds to its conclusion with a simmering sense of tension bubbling away quietly in the background.

But not once in Dumb Money does the dramatic pudding feel overegged.

Perhaps in large part this is due to Dano's approach of making Gill feel like an outsider - albeit an approachable and recognisable one - and his underplaying of the character leaves you in his corner early on, even if the characterisation is somewhat cursory.

Equally Rogen's Gabe Plotkin who finds the stock market crashing is affable enough - with Rogen once again churning in a dramatic performance that doesn't play to his puerile excesses.

Maybe in some ways Dumb Money's take on the underdog in COVID times feels a little underwritten in places, but Gillespie turns in a film that takes a complex subject and reduces it to a mass appeal audience and proves particularly watchable when at its heart all it is is people in front of computers debating whether to buy / sell or discuss what's happening.