Dumb Money Review
Craig Gillespie is here with another true-to-life story. This time it is about the Improbable event of average Joe’s taking on Wall Street big shots and making a lot of money by buying up GameStop stock.
Now if you do not remember this from 2021, I am not going to explain it here, mainly it would take too long and I’m not here to recap the situation, that is why Craig made the movie.
If you’d like a full explanation, here is a good article from Allan Malz at the Cato Journal.
One man, Keith Gill (Played by Paul Dano), believes GameStop’s stock is undervalued. As he streams about why he is buying up GameStop stock, large hedge funds were shorting the stock betting it would fail.
As more average Joe’s bought the stock the price rose and caused the hedge fund managers to lose money causing a “short-squeeze.” It’s a moment in history no one saw happening because the little guy never wins.
Unsurprisingly Craig took a lot of filmmaking inspiration from Adam McKay’s The Big Short. An excellent film about the housing crisis of 2008 and how a few men made a ton of money from the event.
This film was such a success that it has already had many imitators come along. Some have been bad, McKay’s Vice comes to mind. But most have been okay.
Craig’s latest film falls into the okay category. It’s pretty straightforward, telling the story concisely so everyone can understand what happened, but overall the film falls flat.
If you know nothing about this event, Dumb Money is a good movie to convey what happened, but if you know the story, you’ll come away learning nothing new and wondering why you sat through this film.
Craig’s I, Tonya was excellent and I was hoping this would reach that height but it did not. I’m grateful that this was not a miniseries dumped on a streaming service like his miniseries Pam & Tommy was.
We need more mid-budget adult dramas instead of bloated streaming shows that should’ve been a movie. Unless Dumb Money pulls in a lot of money, I don’t think this film will justify giving a big-screen platform for these stories.
Maybe this film came out too recently to its real-life subject. Or maybe Craig took a too-straightforward approach. All the performances are solid. There is nothing actively “wrong” with this film, but it just doesn’t have the fire that The Big Short does.
Maybe it’s because as I stated before, it feels like the little brother of The Big Short.
It was nice to get a full scope of this incredible story, but the film itself falls flat.
3.5/5 Stars
