Remember That Movie About the GameStop Stock?

'Dumb Money' is now available on home video, but it barely works

Dumb Money, Sony

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, one Wall Street story took the world by storm. The idea was that retail traders, people like me and you, were able to buy stock and change market conditions. Due to a popular Reddit forum known as r/wallstreetbets and a YouTube personality, countless individuals fled to purchase shares in the video game company GameStop (GME). Some people bought $300 worth of shares giving them almost 100 shares in the company and when that stock went on its epic climb, they had a joyous payday. Others like Keith ‘Roaring Kitty’ Gill put their entire life savings into GameStop and became millionaires. This story had such a profound effect on our nation that people who never considered owning stock dipped their toes into the market trying to find their own GameStop. It’s a fascinating story to read about and experience, but I’m not so sure it translates well to the screen in Dumb Money.

Gill (Paul Dano) works at Mass Mutual and his work leads him to the GameStop stock. He has a YouTube channel where he takes on the persona of ‘Roaring Kitty,’ shares his balance sheet, and tells the world just how sure he is that GameStop is a stock worth betting on. He finds that the company is significantly undervalued, despite the move from physical media to digital, and he’s willing to bet everything on it. Big companies were involved with the stock, betting on it failing, but when Gill starts influencing people to buy the stock “inadvertently,” it drives up the price. Soon it becomes a huge topic on the Reddit message board r/wallstreetbets and the rest is history. If you want to read the nitty gritty about GameStop and the short squeeze, this NPR article does a better job of explaining it than the movie does.

What the movie is ultimately concerned with is the people who bet on GameStop’s price increase. Characters played by America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, and Myha’la Herrold come from all different walks of life, as they are either students or GameStop employees. They all have one thing in common, they are betting everything on this hunch from Gill. Another perspective that’s given is from the hedge fund managers and the face of Melvin Captial’s Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) goes from feigned disinterest to pure fear pretty quickly. And finally, the story wouldn’t be complete without mention of the commission-free stock website RobinHood that took off during this escapade. Since the story is so widely known at this point, there isn’t much drama to be had, but the biggest tension comes from the fact that these individuals were sitting on big wins with GameStop and held the line until the ultimate payout.

Craig Gillespie directs the movie, but few of his trademark flourishes are apparent in Dumb Money. It certainly doesn’t play like his I, Tonya, or Pam & Tommy series and it should be somewhat similar! He has a flair for taking these already interesting stories and translating them to screen. But Dumb Money almost comes across as a director-for-hire project, almost as if anyone could’ve stepped in and made this.

I remember where I was when this story was playing on all the news channels (heck I even bought a few shares of fellow meme stock AMC for fun) and it’s absolutely a fun underdog story. But there’s little substance to Dumb Money— it is the kind of movie that will play on Netflix eventually, people will press play, and then forget that they watched it. There are worse ways to spend your entertainment dollars, but this is a movie in serious need of an identity. [C]

A review copy of Dumb Money was provided by Sony. It’s now available to rent or buy digitally or wherever home video products are sold.