“I like the stock.”
So said the headband-wearing, beer-sipping, oddly compelling, basement YouTuber, subreddit poster and self-styled geek known as Roaring Kitty, aka DeepF- - -ingValue aka Keith Patrick Gill, when he initiated the now-legendary GameStop short squeeze in January 2021. Sharing his personal financials with his legions of loyal followers, urging them to hold the line as GameStop soared from $17.25 to more than $500 a share in a month, Gill and his army of retail traders (collectively and derisively referred to as “dumb money” by the Wall Street giants) disrupted the market and turned the financial world upside down with their embrace of the seemingly obsolete, brick-and-mortar gaming merchandise retailer.
The story has been well-chronicled in MSNBC’s documentary “Diamond Hands: The Legend of WallStreetBets,” the feature documentary “GameStop: Rise of the Players,” the Netflix documentary series “Eat the Rich: The GameStop Saga” and books such as Ben Mezrich’s “The Anti-Social Network,” which is the basis for Craig Gillespie’s breezy and subversively funny “Dumb Money.” The movie plays out like a thrift-store version of Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” in that it takes us through the looking glass into a world so complex and nebulous even the major players sometimes seem utterly befuddled, but does so as if we’re taking a thrill ride in a Financial Theme Park.
Given that the prolific Mezrich has written non-fiction books that have been adapted into terrific films including “The Social Network” and “21,” and that Gillespie has directed fictionalized takes on offbeat American cultural zeitgeist figures, e.g., “I, Tonya,” “Pam & Tommy” and “Mike” (as in Tyson), it would have been an upset if “Dumb Money” HADN’T delivered.
Paul Dano (“The Batman,” “The Fabelmans”) puts his eccentric energy to perfect use as Keith Gill, an achingly sincere, low-level financial analyst and securities broker living with his supportive wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley) and their baby in a modest home in Brockton, Massachusetts. He remains close to his family, including his bonged-out brother Kevin (a typecast Pete Davidson), who claims his job as DoorDash delivery man during the pandemic qualifies him as a “first responder” and is forever teasing Keith for being a “nerd” who thinks he’s a financial whiz on the level of “Jimmy Buffet.” Donning cat-art T-shirts and a red sweatband for his videos and calling himself “Roaring Kitty,” Keith tells his fans he’s betting his life savings of $53,000 on GameStop — and this is their chance to stick it to the Man.
Or should we say the Men, plural, as we’re introduced to a cadre of incredibly wealthy and comically smug real-life Wall Street power players. When Seth Rogen’s hedge fund manager Gabe Plotkin appears onscreen, a graphic tells us he’s worth $400 million. That seems impressive until we meet Vincent D’Onofrio’s Steven Cohen (the guy who bought the New York Mets), who is worth $12 billion. Next up: one Ken Griffin (deftly played by Nick Offerman), the Citadel CEO who we’re told has a net worth of $16 billion. Early on, these titans are amused by Keith, but that condescending dismissal quickly gives way to genuine panic as they lose millions and then billions in their efforts to short-sell GameStop even as the stock keeps ascending.
Director Gillespie and screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo toggle between broadly comic takes on the money players (at one point Davidson’s character notes one of them is “like a Disney movie villain”) and grounded portrayals of retail investors whose net worth is in the hundreds or who have a negative balance, as the graphics illustrate.
The wonderful players include America Ferrera as an overworked nurse and single mother; two romantically coupled students (Myha’la Heroold and Talia Ryder) who are buried under student loans, and even a GameStop store employee (Anthony Ramos) who works in a store tucked into an indoor mall with virtually no foot traffic. As Keith’s net worth jumps into the tens of millions, these good people are making life-changing money in the tens of thousands of dollars — but many of them get caught up in the moment, the movement, the chance to hold the line and disrupt the status quo on a generational level. Some sell and make some serious coin; others wait too long.
This is the Year of the Capitalist Movie, from “Tetris” to “Air” to “BlackBerry” to “The Beanie Bubble” to “Flamin’ Hot.” (Even “Barbie” on some level.) To the credit of the filmmakers, “Dumb Money” has an entertainment-first vibe throughout and never feels like a financial lecture, thanks in large part to the cheeky script and the quality of the performances.
I like the movie.
