Remember "stonks"? Remember "hodl"? Remember "to the moon"? Remember a strange man with long hair, a red headband, and ironic cat T-shirts speaking into his webcam about the stock market to members of the House Financial Services Committee in Congress? If you are somehow nostalgic for the time in which these words and characters entered our national lexicon, then Dumb Money might be the movie for you.
Dumb Money plays out during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many Americans were shut indoors and much of the world seemed to have simply emptied out. Instead of partaking in large communal gatherings, people interacted online, on Zoom, and social media—and when they did venture into populated places, they wore masks that made it exceptionally annoying and difficult to communicate with others. Dumb Money is at its best as a low-key pandemic period piece, capturing the quiet, lonely oddness and anxiety of this era. While it is not the film's primary point, it works best as a story about one of the many collective manias that took hold during this period.
