I love it when a movie is timely and relevant. I refer to The Social Network, the 2010 origin film about the social phenomenon of Facebook. This social media platform had been made available to the public less than four years earlier. Aaron Sorokin and David Fincher worked magic to create such a masterpiece quickly. I still maintain that The King’s Speech beating The Social Network for Best Picture was one of the biggest shams in Oscar history. It showed just how antiquated and set in their ways the Academy had become. While Craig Gillespie’s (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) Dumb Money is not entirely on the same level as The Social Network, its timely significance cannot be overlooked. Though in a completely different way, the events in Dumb Money are (to many individuals, organizations, and sectors) as impactful as those in The Social Network.

It was just two years ago that the skyrocketing stock of GameStop Corp (GME) dominated the airwaves of not just every investment talk show, website, and vlog, but also national evening news broadcasts and the front pages of national and international newspapers. GameStop is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. For the last couple of dozen years, they have been a mainstay at indoor and outdoor strip malls across the United States. In the first quarter of 2021, GME stock shot up from $4.50 per share to $81.25 in four weeks. The percentage increase was unheard of for a stock that had been devalued so much that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, trading below $1 per share just one year prior. Something was happening, but exactly what? It’s a fantastic story of research, belief, risk, luck, trust, and a combined want to stick it to Wall Street.

While you don’t have to know the ins and outs of the stock market to understand this film, it does help to familiarize yourself with a couple of terms that many investors might need. The first is Short Selling.

• Short Selling is when a seller opens a short position by borrowing shares, usually from a broker-dealer, in the hope of repurchasing them at a lower price for a profit.
• Shares must be borrowed because you cannot sell shares that do not exist.
• To close a short position, a trader repurchases the shares on the Market (hopefully at a price lower than the price at which they borrowed the asset) and returns them to the lender or broker.
• Essentially, if you short-sell a stock, you predict that the publicly traded company will tank. So, say you borrow 1000 shares of a stock selling at $20. You are investing $20,000. If the stock price falls to $5, and you repurchase those shares, you’d be buying them at $ 5,000 for a profit of $15,000 (minus fees). However, if you are wrong, your potential for loss is infinite. If that $20 share somehow rose to $100, your 1000 shares (or $20,000 borrowed investment), you’d be on the hook to repurchase those shares for $100,000.

That was precisely what Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen – 50/50, The Disaster Artist), founder of hedge fund Melvin Capital, does early in the film, noticing a slight rise in the share price early in January 2021, believing it to be a couple of people who had bought many shares that temporarily elevated the price. Without a moment’s hesitation, Plotkin short-sold a considerable part of his portfolio, which ultimately made him the film’s most significant money loser (as seen in the film’s trailer).

Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, Love & Mercy), the film’s lead, commands the screen as Keith Gill, a financial analyst at Mass Mutual by day and Reddit/YouTube channel personality (under the handle Roaring Kitty) by night. Keith entertained as much as he educated and took more than his fair share of losses along the way. He held the belief that the Market was underestimating GameStop’s growth prospects and had the potential to expand its digital capabilities and keep its 60 million loyal customers while incorrectly predicting that the company would go bankrupt, which was something that Plotkin and fellow hedge fund manager Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio – Full Metal Jacket, The Player) thought was foolish. Thus began our battle of the small investor vs. Wall Street bully, David vs. Goliath, or, to some, good vs. evil. The charts, tables, simulations, predictors, and history suggested that the stock would go in one direction. Keith and his followers bucked the trend.

Though Keith’s initial following was relatively small, he invested $53,000 (most of his life savings) into the stock. His community followed and began investing what they could into GameStop, resulting in a Short Squeeze or a rapid increase in the price of a stock, owing primarily to an excess of short selling of the stock. A short squeeze occurs when there is a lack of supply and excess demand for a stock, as short sellers are forced to buy to cover their short positions. This results in short sellers, such as Plotkin and Cohn, needing to pay for those borrowed shares at prices that put their companies in jeopardy of failure. Their potential debt continues to mount as Keith, with his wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley – Snowden, Adrift) supporting him, continues to invest in GameStop rather than sell his shares after he has made millions and millions of dollars. Those following him do the same.

Pete Davidson (The King of Staten Island, Bodies Bodies Bodies) is Keith’s brother Kevin, a Lyft driver who still lives in his parents’ home and borrows his brother’s car without asking him first. He also serves as the film’s primary comic relief and does a great job of simplifying what is happening. Often, we learn of a new stock term or a necessary piece of information through firsthand accounts. Because of the steep learning curve for many who are unfamiliar with the stock market, Kevin will re-explain it, often in simple terms, to his and Keith’s parents.

What Gillespie does best is spread the wealth. Each character is allotted their share of screen time to tell their story effectively. Gillespie does much of this through Keith’s followers, people across the country whose lives don’t overlap and who never have, nor will ever, meet Keith. This includes Jenny Campbell (America Ferrera, Barbie, Lords of Dogtown), a nurse and single mother in Pittsburgh who takes Keith’s advice to earn enough to support herself and her sons. Marcos Garcia (Anthony Ramos (In the Heights, Hamilton) is an honest employee at a GameStop store whose ideals are different from his demanding, unsympathetic boss, who pushes him to sell the priciest items, regardless of whether that’s what is in the best interest of the customer. There are also Harmony (Talia Ryder – Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Do Revenge) and Riri (Myha’la Herrold – Bodies Bodies Bodies, Leave the World Behind), college students who meet and bond over their investment in the company.

Because the likes of Plotkin, Cohn, and many others in their profession can’t take the loss of this particular stock (or any other attempts of this being done in the future), they and their parent companies try to go through many exhaustive (illegal and illegal) means to minimize their losses from their nightmare scenario. Gillespie gives us an inside look at the shadiness that took place throughout 2021 and, without being preachy, delivers a scathing message about Wall Street.

The storytelling and editing are the film’s biggest strengths. Gillespie shows expertise through his in-and-out glimpses of a dozen or so characters throughout the timeline. At various times, we will see a subtitle on the screen next to a given character’s name that shows their net worth at that point. This allows us to root for and against certain characters even more as we anticipate the ending we hope for. The ebb and flow of the movie is done in the style of an Adam McKay (The Big Short, Don’t Look Up, Vice) movie, but with a more objective lens. Dumb Money is 105 minutes of educational entertainment. Add in performances from (Nick Offerman – The Founder, NBC’s Parks and Recreation), Sebastian Stan (Avengers: Infinity War, The Martian), and Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption, 99 Homes) that aren’t even included in this review, and you have one of the few must-see films of 2023.

Plot 9/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 8.75/10
Acting 8/10
Screenplay 8.5/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 7/10 (much of the music had vulgar language that wasn’t needed, limited audiences, and was slightly less effective)
Hook and Reel 9.25/10
Universal Relevance 9.5/10
86%

B

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• The Big Short
• Boiler Room
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Margin Call
• Cosmopolis