In late 2020 and January 2021, a motley crew of small investors, loosely led by a nerdy YouTuber and a Reddit poster calling themselves Roaring Kitty, gave the Wall Street elite an emphatic poke in the eye. An avalanche of money and a frenzy on the shares of GameStop (a struggling American video game store chain) inflated the value of the shares, with brutal consequences for several billionaire hedge funds. It was announced as a counterattack to the cynical practice of short selling (essentially when a trader bets on the downfall of a business) and as an event that heralded the democratization of the stock market, until now an industry strongly strengthened and controlled by the far-right. -Rich and ultra privileged.
Now, director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Cruella) takes on the subject with a vigorous, ripped-from-the-headlines docufiction starring an affable Paul Dano as Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty. There's a lively bustle to Dumb Money, which successfully brings together a host of disparate supporting characters and side story plots. But this is exactly the kind of movie one would expect from Hollywood, an industry heavily empowered and controlled by the ultra-rich and ultra-privileged. It is an underdog triumph narrative that offers a glow of agitational appeasement, but which conveniently overlooks the fact that there has been little real, lasting change. Those who have still have; the have-nots cling to a taste of what could have been.
Director: Craig Gillespie
Writers: Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo, Ben Mezrich
Stars: Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio
Gillespie has already proven himself a director with a talent for harnessing the electric energy of a developing cultural phenomenon and then presenting the story in quickly accessible sound bites. He deftly unpacked the mess of conflicting voices behind the Tonya Harding ice skating scandal with wit and verve, but without much depth; He then did the same, albeit in multiple episodes, with Pam & Tommy, the Hulu series about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's whirlwind romance and the sex-tape furor that followed.
While this story lacks the pop cultural appeal of celebrity names, the film breaks down the GameStop short squeeze into the kind of language that even stock market illiterate people (me, for example) can pick up and gives us a cast of Richly drawn characters to follow. And if there's a flashy, Adam McKay-esque sass to the storytelling (his 2016 Oscar winner The Big Short is an obvious reference; the musical choices tend toward straight-ahead hip-hop), this balances out with attention. down to the detail of the characters and the quality of the performances in all areas.
Foremost among them is Dano, an actor who, with his striking but slightly potato-like face, fits comfortably into unpopular roles like Keith. Dano leans toward the unapologetic geekiness of a man who surrounds himself with barely ironic cat-based kitsch. His Keith is a soft-spoken idiot whose enthusiasm sometimes overwhelms his ability to get the words out. Also great is Pete Davidson, who plays Keith's lazy brother Kevin, a DoorDash deliveryman who spends much of his free time smoking pot and trolling his older brother online. And in tired GameStop employee Marcus (Anthony Ramos) and exhausted nurse Jenny (America Ferrera), we have a couple of down-on-their-luck dreamers to cheer on.
It's fair to say, however, that aside from the Wall Street actors (a sweat-soaked and panicked Seth Rogen; a treacherously slippery Sebastian Stan), the cast of characters has been carefully selected to be likable and sympathetic. And judging by the scroll of clunky, emoji-happy, borderline-imbecile screen-crawling Reddit posts, it's unlikely this is entirely representative of Keith Gill's fanbase.
But while the film may have slightly misrepresented its depiction of users of the r/wallstreetbets subreddit – the site where Keith shared details of his investment portfolio – it is undeniably insightful about the insidious influence of social media as a whole. Ultimately, Dumb Money may not be as revealing about financial markets as it is about the Internet's healing power. Capturing the online whisper network that builds a “meme stock”; which unfolds at the intersection of the Venn diagram where basic human greed meets the propulsive fervor of digital groupthink; At least in this, the film is absolutely right.
Watch Dumb Money 2023 Movie Trailer
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