by Samuel Nichols, Contributing Writer
To misquote Stand by Me, which has a lot more in common with Dumb Money than you’d think, “You wanna see a meme?” Dang, that would have been a terrific terrific tweet or Letterboxd review of this movie. I wish I had thought of that sooner. What was I saying? Oh yeah! Dumb Money hides a wonderful story of fellowship, endurance, and coming of age behind a million internet jokes and gags. Is it all a lot? Not in my opinion, but mileage may vary on that, depending on one’s meme tolerance. All I know is that I appreciated the movie on multiple levels.
Dumb Money follows the pandemic-era stock price of GameStop, and the people who fought tooth and nail to tank it and help the stock rise. The story is almost like watching a star collapse and grow based on the fluctuations of gravity around it, with one group pulling for expansion and the other crushing it in their hands. While one could argue that Paul Dano’s portrayal of Keith Gill is the central figure, the price of the GameStop itself is the guiding force in everything here. Everyday working class people on Gill’s side are his wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley), his brother Kevin (Pete Davidson), nurse Jenny (America Ferrera), actual GameStop employee Marcus (Anthony Ramos), and college students Riri (Myha’la Herrold) and Harmony (Talia Ryder). On the side of the villainous hedge fudge folks who squeeze the life out of a stock everyday are Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman), Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio), and Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan).
Now that is a massive cast full of stars. But the actors aren’t the main feature I have to praise. There is also the filmmaking style of director Craig Gillespie. When Dumb Money was announced, and trailers premiered, immediately comparisons were drawn to big financial flicks like The Big Short. Sure, they both talk about stocks and pit the big institutions against the common people, but their styles couldn’t be further apart. Where The Big Short is concise and almost feels like a documentary, Dumb Money really exists for the memes at the end of the day. Multiple times, we get montages of internet jokes and gags that serve as a reminder of who the little people really were in this scenario. The movie is more of a comedy because of this. It allows its big stars like Dano, Rogen, Davidson, and Ramos to really get a chuckle out of us.
That unspoken and often unseen camaraderie between the humble people of Reddit putting money into this stock is a nice thing to see. There aren’t many direct interactions between a lot of them, but seeing how they are all willing to gather around a singular movement like this stock is honestly a little bit moving. Not too moving, though, because let’s be honest, this movie has a lot of jokes it needs you to hear.
I think some fellow critics would say the lack of seriousness in the stakes really takes some of the power out of this movie’s punch, but I disagree with that on two fronts: First, this squeeze was not, and is not, a super serious situation in my mind. The whole thing was ultimately a joke about how internet communities on Reddit scared the crap out of multibillion dollar firms so much so that they broke the game to win. These firms act so high and mighty, when in reality, a million people across the world just holding the line were able to draw real blood in this fight. Second, because of how goofy this whole story is, I think making a movie about the GameStop stock overly serious would have been ultimately tone deaf. Yes, people put tons of money into the stock, and it affected their livelihood in multiple ways, but ultimately it was just a joke rebellion against financial institutions more than anything in my mind.
Hey, look at that: The bad guys won. But at least we got to give ‘em the finger for a while. That’s good enough for me.
Rating: High Side of Liked It
PS — I don’t believe for a second that Paul Dano can run a near-four-minute mile.
Dumb Money is currently playing in theaters
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