Dumb Money, 2023.
Directed by Craig Gillespie.
Starring Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, and Seth Rogen.
SYNOPSIS:
The recently released comedy-drama Dumb Money, which charts the ups and downs (and even more ups and downs) of the GameStop short squeeze saga, arrives on Blu-ray with a handful of bonus features and a code for a digital copy.
What a wild ride the GameStop short squeeze was in January 2021. I didn’t dabble in it, since I had trouble fully understanding it, but I saw its impact on others I knew. A family member cleared a hefty profit by getting in early and cashing out when the stock was on the way down.
A friend who’s a financial planner didn’t even want to chat about the situation via text, out of fear the SEC was going to be scrutinizing what he felt was an old-fashioned “pump and dump.” And someone I know on Facebook saw the WallStreetBets crowd on Reddit deciding to squeeze some other heavily-shorted stocks and worried their actions would crash the economy. (Yeah, no, that wasn’t going to happen, dude.)
So of course I had to check out the new movie Dumb Money, which traces the craziness of that event with Paul Dano in the lead role of Keith Gill, a YouTube streamer who goes by the screen name “Roaring Kitty” and promoted GameStop’s stock when it was worth very little and the company was seemingly headed for bankruptcy.
Vincent D’Onofrio, Nick Offerman, and Seth Rogen (I know, right?) play three uber wealthy rich dudes whose fortunes are suddenly at risk because they’ve heavily leveraged themselves in shorting GameStop’s stock. I’m not going to name them, honestly, because I don’t feel like giving such people anymore hits on Google searches than they already get.
That trio is introduced with onscreen notes naming them and their net worth, which is repeated for all the other characters, including Gill (he’s doing okay), a nurse named Jenny who follows Roaring Kitty (America Ferrera; her net worth is actually negative), and others who find themselves along for the ride.
Pete Davidson plays Kevin, Keith’s brother and a ne’er-do-well who, like their parents, doesn’t understand what Keith is doing and then implores him to cash out when his net worth rises well into eight figures. Jenny and others who are following Keith hang on his every word, holding their shares when he does, despite seeing their account balances rise well into six figures.
As in real life, however, the GameStop saga doesn’t really reach a climax in the movie. The theory is that all the stock buying could create a phenomenon called “an infinite squeeze,” which would propel the price higher and higher, perhaps forever, but that doesn’t happen, nor do the criminal charges that my friend the financial planner thought would occur.
Instead, Keith “wins” in the sense that he shows retail investors (i.e., regular people who buy stock through apps like RobinHood) can actually play the game alongside the big-time players and aren’t the oft-derided “dumb money,” as people like the uber wealthy trio often refer to them.
Of course, in the end the system will always win, since it’s much easier for a few people to manipulate financial markets than it is for thousands of people on Reddit. And that’s the real message behind Dumb Money.
The end result varies for different characters, with some cashing in and realizing nice gains (like my family member), and others, like Jenny, holding out for the big payoff that will never happen. Keith, wisely, seems to have retreated from the public eye since then. Hopefully he sold off enough GameStop stock that he and his family can live comfortably.
And, of course, the uber wealthy guys came out of this a bit shaken by what the retail investors did but with their fortunes intact, thanks to apps like RobinHood disabling the ability to buy GameStop stock at one point. Like I said, the system will always win.
This new Blu-ray release of the movie by Sony includes a code for a digital copy, which contains the extras also found on the disc. They include:
• Fat Cats vs. The Roaring Kitty (7.75 minutes): This is one of those cursory making-of videos. Ordinarily, I would complain about that, given what a major cultural phenomenon the GameStop short squeeze was, but it’s not hard to find some documentaries about it online if you want to learn more.
• Diamond Hand Ensemble (5.75 minutes): A look at the stellar cast. Seth Rogen laughingly points out that a lot of people thought they were the stars of the film since their scenes mostly featured just them.
• Deleted scenes (2.75 minutes): Nothing exciting here.
• Commentary: Co-screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo give an interesting discussion of their approach to writing the story and the characters. Of particular interest to me was how they tried to reflect what really happened in a 104-minute movie, especially when some characters, like Keith Gill’s wife, had almost no online and media presence.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
Originally published December 12, 2023. Updated April 22, 2024.
