One of the many things I remember about living in the depths of the pandemic in 2020, is the adamance with which people ensured that they would NEVER want to watch a film that would take place in that time. The reality of our lives – stuck at home, missing friends and loved ones, using streaming services to fill impossibly vast emotional voids – was too harsh, too anxious, and (frankly) too boring to ever really warrant wanting to see any kind of dramatic re-telling. Dumb Money isn’t specifically about the COVID-19 pandemic, but its story (which is true) would not have existed without it. The film creatively depicts a time when many people felt they’d lost it all – their job, their way of life, their sanity – and banded together at an opportunity to take it back from the big guys.
Our director, Craig Gillespie, is a workmanlike filmmaker who teeters between idiosyncratic dramedies (Lars and the Real Girl, I, Tonya) and being Disney’s in-house “serious” movie director (Million Dollar Arm, The Finest Hours). Gillespie has a reputation for competence, a gift for coaxing good performances from his actors, and generally for making movies that end up being a smidge better than you expected. Dumb Money is by far the best thing that he’s ever done; a film that both aspires to reach the working class that it advocates for while still carrying the responsibility of being a smart and (most important) entertaining story. Dumb Money achieves that masterful balance between between scathing commentary and compelling character study that Adam McKay only wishes he could pull off.
Paul Dano plays Keith Gill, a financial advisor who also runs a YouTube channel from his basement where he shares his balance sheets with thousands of followers before giving them stock advice under the name “Roaring Kitty”. Gill’s base is small but dedicated and lives mostly on a subreddit called “r/WallStreetBets” where people discuss the stock market briefly in between spouts of explicit (often incendiary) invective. Keith lives with his wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley), and their young baby in a modest home outside of Boston. So it’s a real risk when he decides to invest over $50 thousand in a stock he thinks is being severely undervalued: Game Stop. The retail video game store is not only struggling like all businesses during the pandemic, but there’s also several hedge funds that are shorting the company’s stock – ie, betting against Game Stop’s ability to stay afloat.
One of those hedge funds is run by Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), the founder of Melvin Capital Management, and one of the main trumpeters of Game Stop’s inevitable demise. Gabe is a millionaire who likes to rub elbows with billionaires (including Steve Cohen, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, and Ken Griffin, played by Nick Offerman), and plans to reach that elite class by taking advantage of low hanging fruit (or “dumb money”). Gabe’s plans hit a snag when Keith advises his followers to invest in Game Stop, a stock he feels is being unfairly dismissed. When Keith’s consult goes viral on r/WallStreetBets, many who never even thought about the stock market are suddenly buying as much stock as they can. People like hospital nurse Jenny (American Ferrera) and actual Game Stop employee, Marcus (Anthony Ramos), have made more money than they ever have in their lives. They’re making thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands), which in turn means Gabe and the hedge funds are losing billions.
Dumb Money wants to give the impression (especially in its marketing) of being an ensemble film, and it’s true that it is filled with many good performances, that also includes Myha’la Herrold, Pete Davidson, Talia Ryder, Sebastian Stan, and Dane DeHaan. The reality is that Dano’s Roaring Kitty is the film’s undeniable protagonist, and while the movie’s hectic, cross-cutting aesthetic definitely gives multiple people opportunities to shine, Dumb Money‘s best moments are the ones where Dano is the focus. Dano is defintely not considered a name draw, which is why Sony Pictures has no issue posing this as an ensemble when in reality it’s a star vehicle. We’ve known for years that Dano has made the rare jump from character actor to leading man (I call it “the Giamatti”), even if studios refuse to acknowledge it. His expressive baby face and gentle voice belie an incredibly intense performer with an uncanny understanding of what each individual role requires from him.
More than anything, the script (written by Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo) thankfully resists the urge to stop and explain every little nuance of financial trading. There is no patronizing exhibition monologue meant to assist the Wall Street illiterates as to how this world works. Blum, Angelo, and Gillespie smartly realize that their audience are not the people to condescend to, and in fact they put faith in their capacity to comprehend the basic pillars of drama, if not the ins-and-outs of the stock market. Dumb Money is not a political film, but its sympathies do lie with working class people, and the film is made not to sternly educate said working class but to engage them. That the script may illuminate some to the socioeconomic details of the Game Stop stock explosion (as it certainly did for me) is merely a consequence of a film seeking to entertain.
Watching a movie like Dumb Money is exhilarating in that it shows that studios can still produce broad, adult-oriented films that are still thoughtful without being Oscar bait. It reminded me of Quiz Show, the 1994 film that presented as a middlebrow drama about a recent historical event, but is actually an example of how far good filmmaking and incredible acting can get you. I’ll confess that I’ve never much liked a Craig Gillespie film before this one (his movies mostly seem to aspire toward mediocrity, and thus, achieve it), but it’s important for me to note that Gillespie’s intelligent direction is part of what makes Dumb Money so good. Nearly half the movie is characters staring down the barrel of their phone screen, but Gillespie is still able to make that compelling because we fully comprehend their plight and the space they inhabit. I can’t say I was expecting to see one of the best movies of the year when I walked into the theater, yet here we are.
Directed by Craig Gillespie