Film review: ‘DUMB MONEY’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

Through films like Air, Blackberry and now Dumb Money, an intriguing sub-genre has recently emerged in cinema: the maverick entrepreneur capitalist film. Through their depiction of quirky yet highly driven individuals, these movies both critique and celebrate the American obsession with the market and the pursuit of business success.

The latest addition to this sub-genre, the fascinating, funny, cheekily inspiring, if uneven Dumb Money dramatises the events of what became known as the ‘GameStop short squeeze’. In 2021, as the COVID pandemic raged around the world, a wave of everyday folks or ‘retail investors’ managed to thwart a major hedge funds’ (the film focuses on Melvin Capital) attempt to drive down the price of a video Game company GameStop for a ‘short sell’ where the investor profits if the asset fails. In the process, these everyday investors propelled GameStop to astonishing profits which sent financial moguls into a tailspin.

At the centre of the story is the likeable, cat-obsessed market analyst Keith Gill (Paul Dano) also known on YouTube as ‘Roaring Kitty’ and another name I won’t mention, who galvanises people largely through chat forum Reddit and a subsidiary community called ‘Wall Street Bets’ to invest in GameStop. The film flits between Gill’s experiences and those of various everyday people including nurse Jennifer (America Ferrara) and student Harmony (Talia Ryder) who desperately hope for a windfall to pay off crushing debts.

A little like The Big Short, Dumb Money mixes financial world machinations with quirky comedy although people like Jennifer add some poignant working-class drama.  Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Cruella) establishes a bubbling energy as he tracks the rapid rise of GameStop’s shares and the social media frenzy that builds around it.  Bizarre, hallucinogenic YouTube and TikTok videos are as much a part of this film as conventional narrative storytelling and through these the film attempts to show how much social media is shaping contemporary culture.

On the other side of the ledger to Mr Kitty and the retail investors are the financial elite, in this case Melvin Capital’s Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), billionaire CEO of hedge fund Citadel LLC, Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman) and Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan) CEO of share trading platform Robinhood. While they’re ostensibly seen as the villains for trying to bring GameStop crashing back to Earth, they’re depicted as more comically out of touch and overconfident than ruthless.

One of the difficulties for many viewers watching The Big Short was the financial jargon and even though the GameStop event has been simplified for dramatic effect here, this is still occasionally a problem.  Added to that is alot of stoner ‘bro-speak’ during the YouTube and TikTok videos.  Still, the basic outline of events comes through and the jargon and rapid fire TikTok and YouTube images, while a little too repetitive, don’t completely drown out the human stories.

Paul Dano, who often plays creepy weasels, does a fine job of making Gill an affable and decent guy but he’s still something of an enigma by the end of the film and it would have been satisfying to learn little more about his background.  Pete Davidson, who was astonishingly irritating in the horror film Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, is terrific as Gill’s bong sucking doofus brother Kevin.  He has the funniest lines in the movie including an hilarious overestimation of his importance as a fast-food deliverer. Shailene Woodleigh gives a wonderfully convincing and understated performance as Keith Gill’s wife Caroline who acts as a beacon of stability and sense in the chaotic world that Gill helps set in motion.  As she did in Barbie, America Ferrara delivers another potent low-key performance, here giving the film heart with her portrayal of a nurse trying to improve her lot through GameStop while dealing with the frontline horrors of COVID.

Understandably, with a range of major characters, not everyone is allotted the screen time they deserve and Nick Offerman’s appearances as Ken Griffin are a little too fleeting and don’t allow him to make the impression he could have. Also, intriguingly, there’s no depiction of GameStop management and their reaction to the frenzy around their company’s shares.

Dumb Money stumbles occasionally but Craig Gillespie and a fine cast have managed to turn what was essentially a story about internet transactions into a rollicking study of contemporary social disruption.

Nick’s rating: ***1/2

Genre: Drama/ Comedy.

Classification: MA15+.

Director(s): Craig Gillespie.

Release date: 26th Oct 2023.

Running time: 104 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

 

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