Game Boys
Watch what happens with rich people game the system then get pissed when someone else plays their game – and wins.
Dumb mOney
Director: Craig Gillespie • Writers: Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo, based on the book by Ben Mezrich
Starring: Paul Dano, Shailene Woodley, America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Nick Offerman, Sebastian Stan, Seth Rogen
USA • 1hr 45mins
Opens Hong Kong October 5 • IIB
Grade: B+
Regardless of whether or not you knew who Roaring Kitty was back when the ’rona was first running rampant, you probably heard of the GameStop short squeeze and stock crisis – or boom and Giant Middle Finger, depending on where your work space was – and got a healthy chuckle from the schadenfreude of it all. If Covid was keeping you off the intertoobs, the short version is a bunch of Average Joe stock market traders hit their iPhones and Galaxys, fired up consumer trading app Robinhood and sent video game and electronics retailer GameStop’s stock price through the roof on the strength of YouTube stock analyst Keith Gill’s recommendation. This came much to the chagrin of the Wall Street heavyweights, whose plans to “short” the company and somehow make a shit ton of money for themselves were scuttled by Gill’s modest working class army.
It’s this story that’s dramatised by director Craig Gillespie (the underrated The Finest Hours, I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) and co-writers Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo in Dumb Money, which itself takes its title from the degrading, disrespectful and dismissive term financial “geniuses” use for retail and consumer traders. These are the same “geniuses” of course that drove the world right off an economic cliff in 2008, 1997, 1987, 1974… But what do I know, right? Based on the book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich, the immediate comparisons are going to be to The Big Short, and fair enough: both are snarky dramas that take aim squarely at late stage capitalism and its unapologetic defenders, and does so fairly well. Short’s already paved this road, and it’s a hard act to follow, but Paul Dano’s central turn as a normie speaking directly to other normies and demystifying an industry that works hard at maintaining its mystery wins you over in the end, and as a bonus, Dumb Money is one of the best casually Covid movies to come down the pipe yet.
Smart money’s on the cat guy
So here’s Keith Gill (Dano), an analyst at a big financial firm, slogging through Covid with his wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley, not irritating, good for you Shailene) and awkwardly mourning the Covid death of his sister with his brother Kevin (Pete Davidson, and I’m still not getting the appeal of this guy) and parents Elaine and Steven (Kate Burton and Clancy Brown, whose appeal I totally get). When he’s done at work he takes up his Roaring Kitty Reddit handle, complete with righteous kitten t-shirt, and talks stock to average folks. When he picks GameStock as something to root for – it’s undervalued because Wall Street types don’t “get it” – a handful of his (initially) few followers buy in. Among those working class schlubs are nurse Jennifer (America Ferrera, doing the rounds as the Universally Stomped On after Barbie), college girlfriends, already in debt thanks to being in college, Riri and Harmony (Myha'la Herrold and Talia Ryder), and GameStop clerk Marcos (Anthony Ramos), who steals the movie with his “WAP” rendition.
When GameStop – alias GME – starts climbing in value, making Keith, Riri, Jennifer and Marcos a little wealthier than the day before, it hits Wall Street fat cats Steve Cohen (Vincent D'Onofrio), Kenneth Griffin (Nick Offerman) and Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) where it hurts: in the wallet. When they start bleeding billions of dollars and wind up in a class war when Roaring Kitty’s Diamond Hands refuse to cash out and crash the stock, Gill morphs into something of a folk hero; a Robin Hood for the stock market age. Then the feds step in, because when you start messing with rich white people’s money, something must be done.
We all read the news, and we all followed the drama that unfolded in the winter of 2021, so there’s not much in Dumb Money on the information front. What works is Gillespie’s reliable capacity for dark, bitchy humour and his ability to strip the spit shine right off the pillars of our communities. Some of the film’s high points come late, when Gillespie splices in actual Zoom footage of Senate hearings over how this all happened (Hi, Maxine!) and exploits Rogen, Offerman, and Sebastian Stan (as Robinhood fintech bro Vlad Tenev) for flawless buffoonery. And Gillespie never talks down to his retail traders; they’re frustrated, they’re stressed, and they just want a piece of the pie everyone tells them they should (hello JPEX investors). Jennifer is a fucking nurse… with two kids… during Covid. If anyone deserves a few extra bucks it’s her. She’s an impefect person, but she’s the majority and she shouldn’t be punished for social status.
Ironically the “good” guys are shot in dim, dark rooms and under gloomy skies, while Plotkin and Griffin are often placed under sunny spaces and in glamorous, glittery dining rooms. It’s an on-the-nose visual device but it works, thanks to the uniformly strong cast. Dano is a master of the sad sack at this point, but his performance is so fundamentally recognisable and empathetic he makes it easy to understand where Roaring Kitty’s followers got up the lather to act. There was a bit of rebellion in The Great Short of ’21. There was anger. There was hope and a bit of desperation. Bottom line Dumb Money is a David vs Goliath story, about how David played the game by the rules as Goliath set down (is it really an accident Gill picked GameStop?), won and then Goliath got all butt hurt about it and threw a tantrum. Nothing’s going to change, but it’s great fun to watch Goliath squirm, even if only for a few minutes. — DEK
*Dumb Money was reviewed during the 2023 WGA agreement ratification and SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labour of the writers and actors it wouldn't exist.