Okay, so Dumb Money is directed by Aussie Craig Gillespie – he’s the guy responsible for that wonderful biopic, I, Tonya, from a few years ago, that saw Margot Robbie and Alison Janney absolutely excel. Here, I would also like to learn about what happened with the big GameStop squeeze that I’ve heard about, but would still need explained to me. And my local cinema is also giving away a chance to win $5,000 just for seeing Dumb Money in theatres too 💸 Sounds like the perfect concoction to sway me towards Dumb Money.
And as I just wrote, Dumb Money is about the big GameStop squeeze, that sent the share price of a failing company through the roof(!), due to a groundbreaking online campaign that more than ruffled a few feathers in the hedge-fund game and threatened to send firms broke. Dumb Money follows a number of people on different trajectories through this caper – Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) is a rich investor, shorting the stock and facing financial ruin, while Keith Gill (Paul Dano) is in his basement on YouTube, simply stating he ‘likes the stock’, and fueling an absolutely absurd grass-roots finance defiance.
My main major point of reference when it comes to the stock market is in The Big Short, and thank-you director Adam McKay so much for that; that movie is a tremendous example of elevated film technique working to inform upon a real-life event at the same time as entertain. But then McKay took it all too far for me when he made Vice, forgetting that the drama is in the neutral event, and not a twist of one’s own political opinion, to get a message across. Look at Barbie, as another example, for Greta Gerwig spends time exploring all sides of the discourse around the sixty-year-old doll, that you might come away from the movie not actually really knowing where her own personal beliefs lie. This may be a thin argument, even for me, but what’s led me here is that Dumb Money is delving into the same space, and needs to maintain an accuracy whilst employing a dramatic bend… I was inspired by this story, just for how unlikely was the event. Dumb Money’s fantastical true nature even pinged a memory from Spotlight, for when Keith and Caroline (Shailene Woodley) are struggling to believe their good fortune, as the stock is up beyond 100 points, it only then jumps above 300 – the trend sort’ve elicits the opposite emotional response, but the same disbelief, where in Spotlight, the number of priests discovered keeps exponentially climbing. Without knowing the major characters at play in this movie ahead of time, it initially made me chipper just at the thought of coupling “Wet-Ass Pussy” to this scrubby nerd sensation, making him look baller; and I’m fine with ‘WAP’ by Cardi B becoming usurped as a nerd anthem, where they (we) own being called a pussy 😺 But then you discover, through Dumb Money, that Keith’s YouTube name is Roaring Kitty, and it makes more sense, but it still makes me laugh.
I think this movie’s superstar is in its editing. The movie has to juggle eight or so perspectives, and keep up with them at any given time, as the story evolves. I like the scenes that show comparably, how Keith’s wife is ecstatic at the money they’re making, while Gabe’s wife is commiserating their financial loss – it just goes to show how the numbers on the screen in this push-pull zero sum money game affect people’s lives. When Dumb Money introduced Sebastian Stan’s character, I thought “not another one”, although I now know how important Vlad Tenev becomes to the overall story. And yet, with such a large cast, I don’t think anyone in this movie ends up being expendable – nobody is on the periphery as a drain, and nobody ends up shining more than the others; although Jenny’s story (America Ferrera) did have me the closest to shedding a sympathetic tear when she thought she’d lost it all on the first-class flight home. Even Dane DeHaan’s bitch of a GameStop manager was good value every time the movie crossed back to him, and his run-ins with Marcos (Anthony Ramos). And for that reason, I’d have to say that Dumb Money is either another example of Gillespie getting the most out of his talents, or equally, an expression of the movie’s casting finding aces for places, which is just another way of saying everyone is cast perfectly. Oppenheimer might be impassable this year for best ensemble, but I could see Dumb Money finishing on the podium…
It’s great to see Paul Dano shine through as a main hero of a movie – he’s no man’s punching bag today! America Ferrera is basically playing the same woman she brought to life in Barbie, and this movie wasn’t to know at the time of filming what kind’ve cultural impact that movie would have, or Ferrera herself, so it seems two movies just jumped on Ferrera’s steady talents at the same time 😁 I was also rapt to see Shailene Woodley have a largish presence once it’s clear that she’s to be the most intuitive and supportive person in the room – I get a sense that Woodley can be maligned, but I can only imagine that it’s hard to leap from teen star to respected adult roles, and I really enjoyed her here. Pete Davidson, is alright – at first I worried he would be OTT for laughs, but he hones it in to become a respectable dick; while Bodies Bodies Bodies co-star Myha’la Herrold can be in every movie if she’s going to be the sassy smart lesbian. The scene where Harmony (Talia Ryder) puts her hand down Riri’s pants (Myha’la Herrold) was tantalizing, and there were some at that college party distracted on their phones, missing out on some good voyeurism – damn desensitised generation 😑 And by the way, Seth Rogen is also really great. And Sebastian Stan is such a terrific character actor – the MCU were lucky to claim him when they did. Have I missed anyone? Anthony Ramos also catches a neat role after being amazing in In the Heights.
I don’t really know how Reddit works either, but one perspective I did feel was missing from Dumb Money was that of those making the memes and GIFs, driving the culture of the GameStop holders. Keith wasn’t making them, was he, for he was just a catalyst of the swell? Although, my biggest knock on the movie would actually be with its marketing department – I feel like Dumb Money should be a big movie, but I’ve seen little to no advertising for it. I also don’t have a solution, but the poster is so dismissible – it doesn’t mention GameStop, and I wouldn’t even have a clue what this movie is, relying on the poster alone. The poster makes Dumb Money look like a flat ensemble comedy like 2016’s Masterminds, and do you want to watch Masterminds again? Of course, you don’t! Personally, if I didn’t have so many incentives driving me towards Dumb Money, then I might have ignored it; but now that I have seen this movie, it might well be in the running for my top 10 movies of the year. Diamond-fucking-hands!
4.5
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