Dumb Money – Review
105 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo, and Ben Mezrich
Directed by Craig Gillespie
**NOTE: this post may be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
Dumb Money is the ultimate David vs. Goliath tale, based on the insane true story of everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop (yes, the mall videogame store) into the world’s hottest company.
The GameStop stock “crisis” of 2021 cannot be talked about enough. In fact, if you’re looking for a simple, fact-based look at what happened and why, you might check out the documentary series on Netflix called Eat The Rich, which will give you all those silly, boring, technical details.
But if you want to see the people behind those events and how they got to where they were, to see how a system can push the “little guys” to the point where, using the system EXACTLY as intended, and as used by the “big guys,” they can bring that system to a grinding halt.
Check out Dumb Money.
The cast of Dumb Money is excellent, with various “retail” stockholders portrayed by America Ferrera and Anthony Ramos, while the big, bad Hedge Fund guys are perfectly embodied by Vincent D’Onofrio, Nick Offerman, and even Seth Rogan managed to bring the rich frat-boy entitled d-bag to life as the biggest corporate loser.
But the real stand-out here is Paul Dano. Can we please acknowledge how underappreciated and overly-talented this guy is? As Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, Dano is simply perfection.
This guy needs a trophy. Seriously.
Of course, we know how it ends, with the Robinhood app screwing over its customers to avoid angering its backers, who happen to be those losing at the hands of Robinhood’s customers…
Oh, what a tangled web is finance and government…and nobody gets busted except for–wait for it!–the LITTLE GUY, who gets screwed out of their earnings while the Hedge Fund folks get bailed out of their losses.
I’ve always though the Stock Market should REFLECT the economy, not DRIVE it, but it’s become a high-stakes gambling rig, one whose weaknesses were exposed by the GameStop event, and continued on with the AMC movement later.
Despite these shortcomings being clearly identified and the rigged system exposed, no action was taken because too many of the rule-makers are also playing the game.
I believe in Capitalism, but this was FUBAR.
Dumb Money is in Limited release this week, September 22, and goes wide next week and stars Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley and Seth Rogen.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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