Review: Dumb Money — Crooked Marquee

Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money jumps into its story in midstream, introducing its characters by name and net worth (both positive and negative), as the stock for the video game store Game Stop “breaks 100.” I jotted that down carefully and am putting in quotes because even after watching this very entry-level movie (as well as the similarly user-friendly films that so obviously inspired its approach, The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street), I still barely understand what any of this means, or how the stock market works, like, in general. The picture takes its title from Wall Street’s name for individual investors (or, as they are also called, “retail traders”), and I’m even dumber than they are. And you may be as well. And that, as we have learned time and time again, is what the people who make a fortune on “The Street” are literally banking on.

That’s all pre-title table-setting; Gillespie then hops back six months, to properly introduce us to the man at the center of this story, Keith Gill (Paul Dano). By day, he’s an analyst for Mass Mutual, but he spends his free time tinkering with penny stocks and talking about them online (he’s a “recreational YouTuber,” shudder). He refuses to buy in to the infallibility of the “real” investors and brokers; “They’ve got all the advantages, and they still get it wrong,” he notes, not inaccurately.

So, via his Youtube videos and his presence on the “Wall Street Bets” Reddit, he starts talking up the GameStop stock, which he believes is wildly undervalued. He doesn’t exactly project financial acumen (“I wouldn’t take investment advice from a guy in a cat T-shirt,” one observer notes), but his influence proves to be just as underestimated as the stock he’s championing. “Retail traders always lose,” insists Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), whose company has shorted the stock. And that’s usually the case. But not this time.

The smart script—by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, adapting Ben Mezrich’s book The Antisocial Network—crosscuts between a selection of individual investors and interested parties; the construction is perhaps too schematic, but that rigidity occasionally pays off (as in Gill and Plotkin’s back-to-back “how much did we make/lose today/yesterday” conversations with their spouses). And the casting choices are bullseyes throughout. This is like a role custom-built for Dano’s offbeat charm and sometimes overwhelming intensity (I particularly dug the little montage of how he gets into character before going live online). Rogen seems to relish playing an unsympathetic character, and seizing on his sweaty desperation. Nick Offerman is a scream, offsetting the manic tone and loud volume by underplaying (even for him). As Keith’s ne’er-do-well brother, Pete Davidson skates in and scoops up scenes by the handful. And it’s just a little corner of the movie, but Keith’s relationship with his wife Caroline (a grounded Shailene Woodley) is awfully charming; the thoughtfully supportive spouse is always more interesting than the nagging one.

Gillespie’s direction is thankfully much closer to I, Tonya than Cruella. The still far-too-rare onscreen portrayal of life during COVID is welcome, and useful not only for historical purposes; the pandemic setting helps underscore the class warfare element of this story, putting into crisp images the contrast between how the rich and poor were living at that particular moment.

On the downside, he’s awfully reliant on wacky montages, and telling this story has the unfortunate side effect of engaging in and dramatizing the edgelord language and behavior so central to Reddit. And the picture has to work awfully hard twisting itself into something resembling a happy, crowd-pleaser, studio-picture ending. But those are mostly minor complaints; Dumb Money is a genuinely compelling story, with a lot to root for, entertainingly told.