Craig Gillespie‘s Dumb Money premiered at last week’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The film recounts some of the events around the short squeeze of GameStop stock in January, 2021. It does this by pitting the lives of some of the retail investors investing in the stock such as Keith Gill (Paul Dano) who pushes the stock against those of hedge fund managers like Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio), Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman), and Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen). The movie is based on a book called The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich but the screenplay is written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo.
The film is definitely not a neutral documentary and it would be hard pressed to call it a biopic. Gill’s character is fleshed out somewhat. We meet his supportive wife played by Shailene Woodley and his idiot brother played by Pete Davidson over a number of scenes, and even encounter his parents in a couple. That being said, it’s really hard to get a thorough understanding of his character or what motivates him. He seems like a pleasant millennial, a young parent who never argues with his wife or has any internal struggles that might give us insight into his character. All we really know of him is that he works for a financial institution, invests on the side, and really loves cats. Gill is a quiet, stable, moderate voice on the WallStreetBets Reddit forum that is filled with foul mouthed commenters who shoot from the hip and exhibit the worst behaviour the internet can dredge up. Through it all, as Gill gains more traction, he sticks to his line that he just likes the GameStop stock, thinks it’s undervalued, and believes in value investing, holding his stocks for the long haul. He runs laps around a track to de-stress and doesn’t lose his composure, toasting those who tune in for his livecasts with a beer while sharing memes of kittens and other cat related goofiness.
The film presents the events as nothing short of a revolution. The other people who follow Gill’s lead, a nurse and single mom with debts (America Ferrera), a GameStop store clerk (Anthony Ramos), and two college students with high tuition debts (Talia Ryder and Myha’la Harrold), buy the stock as a way to stick it to the hedge fund managers that are betting against GameStop’s survival. None of these characters are fleshed out and therefore it’s difficult to evaluate their performances. The same goes for the hedge fund managers which is a real shame because you get the feeling that Offerman and especially D’Onofrio could have delivered a lot more with worthier material. The film gives us slices or vignettes rather than actual scenes, tracking the wild ride and proceedings. It doesn’t take time to explore the economics behind the stock trading or to delve into anything we don’t already know.
As such, the film requires you to bring a cursory understanding of what happened in 2021 so that the film can throw together a bunch of highlights chronicling the proceedings. The name of the book it’s based on is a play on The Social Network which was a much more in-depth look into the rise of Mark Zuckerberg and is a much more compelling movie. Even someone like Pete Davidson is wasted in this film because he’s capable of much funnier delivery and if he’d been given a chance to write his own lines, I think the film would have been an edgier one.
Ultimately, the film ends with the participation of the founders of Robinhood, Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev (Rushi Kota and Sebastian Stan), and their part in the whole debacle. The film suggests heavily that the Robinhood guys bent to the pressure of the hedge fund managers and limited buying of GameStop stock on their platform, only allowing selling to happen; this killed the momentum the WallStreetBets investors were carrying, and keept the hedge funds alive. There is a congressional hearing on the matter but nothing comes of it. None of this is news to most people, and people probably made up their minds about it two years ago. The film isn’t interested in giving a new take on the situation or creating nuanced portraits, only sensationalizing the events. Nor is it as funny as it seems in the trailer. It assumes you are on board with its fairly two dimensional viewpoint and account of the events, and doesn’t leave much to mull over afterwards.
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