Dumb Money: When the Little Guys Beat Wall Street for a Hot Minute
By Jim Slotek
Rating: A-minus
The crowd-pleasing Dumb Money is the latest onscreen evidence that reality trumps fiction for crazy. Directed by Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya), and echoing aspects of The Big Short, it’s a good-guys vs. bad guys stock-market tale that made headlines during the pandemic, though few really understood it.
The good guys in this case were everyday types - baristas and nurses, gamers and stoners – the last people you’d expect to game Wall Street and alarm Congress by acting en masse to disrupt the system.
The bad guys? Well, the word “billionaire” doesn’t give most people the warm fuzzies.
Keith Gill (Paul Dano) disrupts Wall Street from the comfort of his home office in Dumb Money
Fresh from the Toronto International Film Festival, Dumb Money, can be seen as a sequel to The Big Short, or its flipside. The earlier film told the story of financiers who saw the 2008 crash coming, and “shorted” stocks – ie. bet on them to lose.
Dumb Money tells how a low-rent, online financial advisor named Keith Gill (a hypercharged Paul Dano) – who posted under the name Roaring Kitty - sensed a short in action with the driving down of GameStop stock, the bricks-and-mortar retail chain for players who like hard copies of their favourite game.
In an era of online play, GameStop wasn’t a great long-term bet, but Gill sensed it was still worth far more than the $3 a share it had fallen to.
The tie-dyed eccentric family man, working from his home computer, put the word out via Reddit, and through a free for-dummies stock trading app called Robin Hood, going viral with his passionate plea to use those smartphones, buy and “hold the line” on GameStop shares.
Dumb Money does a terrific job of energizing the process of personalizing a viral revolt in action. Bar patrons are seen suddenly watching CNBC the way they might watch a local sports team on a roll. People like college students Harmony (Talia Ryder and Riri (Myha'la Herrold) marvel at suddenly becoming “thousand-aires” with a few clicks of their phones, debt-ridden nurse and single mother Jenny (America Ferrera) is torn whether to stay in the game or pay bills, and put-upon minimum-wage GameStop employee Marcus (Anthony Ramos) finds himself in a position of enviable irony. People join in for their own reasons, from pandemic boredom to the chance to give a middle finger to “The Man.”
Pete Davidson, as Gill’s stoner brother, Kevin, contributes to the celebratory atmosphere by, well, just being Pete Davidson.
“Hold the line,” becomes a mantra as Roaring Kitty publicly refuses to sell (to the consternation of his wife, played by Shailene Woodley), and hordes of fellow GameStoppers fall in line.
Meanwhile, the bad guys quickly discover the risk of the short, an “infinite” capacity to lose money if the stock rises instead of falls. Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), the mastermind behind the short, is introduced as so decadent, he buys a house merely to turn it into a tennis court, so that he can still play while in lockdown. Suddenly, he’s effectively bankrupt. Nick Offerman gives great billionaire-villain as Ken Griffin, the devil in every deal.
Once a Congressional committee is involved, Dumb Money injects footage of actual politicians, further intertwining the events in the film with real life.
Of course, real life is never exactly as portrayed. Bankrupted billionaires don’t end up on the streets. They just get bailed out. But the vibe in Dumb Money is as if the Occupy Wall Street crowd knew enough about high finance to simply beat Wall Streeters at their own game.
If it’s not exactly a documentary, Dumb Money offers up enjoyably anarchic glee as the little guy wins for a minute.
Dumb Money. Directed by Craig Gillespie. Starring Paul Dano, Shailene Woodley, Seth Rogen. Opens Friday, September 22.