Stuck at home with little to do during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Keith Gill (Paul Dano) began vlogging about the stock market and posting on r/WallStreetBets.  In January of 2021, he posted about pouring his savings into NYSE: GME, a company better known as GameStop.  The video goes viral, blowing open the publicly available secret that hedge funds had been short-selling the stock, betting that the game retailer will fail, and as more and more day traders begin purchasing shares through the Robinhood app, the price of the stock grows to an eventual high of $347.51.  While many people profited off of this “meme stock,” many executives and fund managers found themselves hemorrhaging money until Robinhood intervened and cut off access to the stock in a controversial move that resulted in a congressional hearing where all involved were asked to testify. 

Craig Gillespie directs Dumb Money, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo’s adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book, The Antisocial Network, which covers this wild moment in time that really ushered in the distrust that the populous – especially the younger generations – have towards the elite class.  Released by Sony, the super modern biopic runs 104 minutes and boasts a wide cast of character actors that all either play into or bristle against type.  In addition to the cast list, the recency of the events is enough to get the film on people’s radar, and relatively positive buzz after its Toronto premiere helped dispel fears that, while it certainly is leaning on the style and cadence of the peek-behind-the-curtain films popularized by Adam McKay, Gillespie still brings his own flair and identity to the narrative. 

The film opens with Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) who will represent one of the big losers of the film and the script is merciless in its contempt of him.  He is struggling to get his permits approved at a new Florida property he just purchased, not because he wants to build but rather, because he wants to tear down the existing residence and install a private tennis court, so he does not need to walk to the existing courts.  In the middle of his argument with the construction crew, he gets another call from Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio) about what is going on with this viral Game Stop stock, and because Gabe’s firm, Melvin Capital Management, had been short-selling GME, he is now in an almost unrecoverable position and poised to lose billions of dollars a day.  He calls Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman), interrupting the majority stakeholder of Citadel’s meal at the country club, who agrees to wire over funds to keep Melvin afloat during this crisis.  Panic in the penthouse is averted and all is well because there are no consequences when you are rich and powerful as we are all too aware. 

Dumb Money then shifts a year back in time, introducing audiences to Keith as he gets ready to make his first video about GME in his modestly finished basement.  The contrast could not be more apparent, and Gillespie’s film is much kinder to Keith as he leads the way for thousands of young investors to dip their toes into stock trading.  Because so much of this story unfolded online, Dumb Money is able to take a mosaic approach to its structure, following multiple arcs of characters who are all situationally related but never directly interact with each other.  This opens the world up to include Marcus (Anthony Ramos), a disaffected Game Stop employee, and his manager, Brad (Dane DeHaan), with clear corporate aspirations.  Taking place in the middle of the pandemic, essential worker and single mother Jenny (America Ferrera) is ecstatic at her growing wealth, ignoring her coworker Chris’ (Larry Owens) urgings to sell and get her kid braces among other more costly necessities.  We also follow Keith’s brother, Kevin (Pete Davidson), who plays a good-natured but deadbeat Uber Eats driver who constantly rails against his brother for going to college. In a surprising turn, Gillespie trusts Davidson to handle many of the emotional moments in the film and, in turn, he delivers a very strong and central performance that leans into his comedic strengths while still tempering them so that he does not stand out like a ghoulish oaf. Lastly, we are introduced to college couple Riri (Myha’la Herrold) and Harmony (Talia Ryder) who see GME as a way out of the crippling student debt which they will graduate into. 

Despite the wide cast, the film does not drill too deeply into anything specific about the phenomenon more than anyone even passingly aware of it will be able to recall.  Some of the names and characters may be new, but as far as the ins and outs of the trading scandal are concerned, it is all very light.  Towards the end, when everything begins crashing down for all involved, Dumb Money really lifts the stakes after treading water in its second act.  The congressional hearing where Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan), one of the founders of Robinhood, as well as Ken, Gabe, and Kieth are all called to testify is intercut in an exciting way that recaps the characters’ states of mind and their intentions.  In preparation, Gabe’s wealth and privilege are called out by his team as it would make his testimony very unsympathetic to be surrounded by such luxury. Vlad sweats as he is pressed about his decisions to restrict trading and Ken is dragged by the public for his sheer comic book villainy. While Dumb Money was always telling this story through Keith’s eyes, in this final sequence, someone else shines through; Caroline (Shailene Woodley), Keith’s wife, sitting on the basement steps fully supportive of her husband. On the page, Caroline is very much “the wife” role, but Woodley brings a kindness and purity to it that is really nice to see. That she is even in the conversation at all is a testament to her performance which is far more muted than many of the other cast members, but Woodley makes Caroline an essential role in the film and gives Keith the confidence and resolve he needs to continue to follow his instincts. 

Dumb Money is well made and well thought out, but it was very clearly a race to the set to be the first film to cover this story. Even before the dust had settled, the internet was abuzz with chatter about who will star in the eventual movie, because that is just the life cycle of major events nowadays. Because of this, Gillespie’s film has nothing really new or insightful to say about the matter because the story on which it is based has not really finished and the true effects have yet to be felt. While there is no matter of decorum to worry about like with some too-soon adaptations of actual tragedies – unless, of course, you consider billionaires who have amassed their wealth by betting on companies to fail losing said wealth when the markets turn (and swiftly getting bailed out) a tragedy – there is still no chance for the real effects of the story to play out so the film just sort of ends with no real resolution. Framing it around Keith does allow it to hang up its hat with an intertitle of when his last post was, but the movement he created is far more interesting than he is as a character, and Gillespie cannot extend the story further than we are right now. It is missing that searing bite back at the protections afforded to big business when they screw up as opposed to the financial dystopia which most Americans live in day to day. Gillespie does about as well as one can given the circumstances, but ultimately the film has very little to say on that matter, and though it is clearly in the camp of the everyday citizen who may struggle to put food on the table or gas in the car to go to their gig jobs, it does not come down near as hard as it should on the powers that be who allowed this “crisis” to occur; but perhaps, that fault lies more on the laws that govern and less so an error on the filmmakers.