Everyday people flip the script on Wall Street and get rich by turning GameStop into one of the world's hottest companies. In the middle of everything is Keith Gill, a regular guy who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock. When his social media posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets wealthy -- until the billionaires fight back and both sides find their worlds turned upside down.
Director: Craig Gillespie
Cast: Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, Seth Rogen
Release Date: September 15, 2023
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama
Rated R for pervasive language, sexual material, and drug use
Runtime: 1h 44m
Craig Gillespie's Dumb Money takes the 2021 GameStop stock madness and breaks it down into an easily digestible and enjoyable annotated version of the true story. He gives his film a chaotic energy which fits the subject matter perfectly even though the film describes the investing strategies at play. The early exposition dump does a solid job of explaining the concepts in such a manner that any layman, myself included, can follow the ideas with general ease. The story follows multiple angles of the story with the central focus being on Dano's Keith Gill who kick starts the events. Additionally, we get moments with the hedge fund managers and retail investors as the stock situation explodes on the scene. The ensemble does a solid job of making these moments engaging even if they don't offer the sort of depth that the main storyline is afforded. Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, Vincent D'Onofrio and Sebastian Stan make up the money side of the story with Rogen getting the most screen time and subsequently leaves the biggest impression. Offerman, D'Onofrio and Stan aren't asked to do much outside of looking smug or annoyed for a variety of reasons. The rest of the ensemble played by familiar faces like America Ferrera and Anthony Ramos makes up the everyday retail investors who rally behind Gill's market play. The characters themselves are composites of real people with the film content to use them to represent types of people as opposed to something a bit more nuanced and three dimensional. Dano gets much more to work with his character getting more depth and texture throughout the film. In turn he delivers a likeable, sincere performance that makes his character easy to root for from start to finish. The film does gloss over some of the murkier details on the Reddit boards, other stocks that were part of situation and overall lasting effect of everything that went down. There are plenty of documentaries that get into more the nitty gritty of what happened, but Dumb Money makes for a fascinating, well crafted cinematic retelling that captures the spirit of the moment.
B+
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