Fighting capitalism with, um, more capitalism

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This article was published 22/09/2023 (715 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘The top one per cent thinks you’re dumb.” That’s the tagline for Dumb Money and it sums up the direct but somewhat unambitious appeal of this crowd-pleasing class-war dramedy.

This little film has its flaws, but basically, if your bank balance is less than nine figures, there will be something here for you to enjoy.

Unlike other recent entries in the eat-the-rich genre, such as Triangle of Sadness and The Menu, Dumb Money doesn’t need elaborate metaphors or fancy allegories. It’s got the true-life saga of the 2021 GameStop stock freakout, in which a regular guy making YouTube investment videos in the basement of his rented bungalow got the jump on some ultra-wealthy Wall Street plutocrats.

Hedge fund manager Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) — net worth $400 million — kicks off this unlikely tale by betting on the failure of GameStop share prices, which at the time seems like a safe gamble. After all, the company relies on diminishing consumer trends made even more dire by the COVID pandemic — bricks-and-mortar retail, shopping malls and video games that come in a box.

Keith Gill (Paul Dano) is a low-level market analyst with a net worth of $97,427 (all the characters are introduced with a dollar value printed next to their faces). He makes lo-fi videos under the name Roaring Kitty and tells his viewers that GameStop stock is actually undervalued. Soon Gabe’s short bet against GameStop gets a short squeeze by a crowd of ordinary people brought together by the unpredictable power of social media.

The 99 per cent are represented by Keith and his wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley), in underwritten roles that still manage to register because of strong, low-key performances and Dano’s rather poignantly unusual face. There’s Keith’s screw-up brother Kevin (a typecast Pete Davidson) and Keith’s hardworking parents (Kate Burton and Clancy Brown), maybe the only characters in this story who aren’t Extremely Online and are therefore surprised to hear their son has made $23 million playing the market.

Keith’s followers include America Ferrara as an overstretched single mom working in front-line health, Myha’la Herrold and Talia Ryder as two college kids mired in student debt, and Anthony Ramos as a guy who actually works at a GameStop shop and would like something more from the corporation than his meagre minimum wage. (Understandably, the movie says less about the involvement of Elon Musk and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. Not exactly likeable underdogs.)

These retailer investors put in a few hundred or thousand dollars into GameStop stocks and then watch them go up and up and up.

Over the course of a few weeks, the little guys are making millions, the big guys (Vincent D’Onofrio and Nick Offerman) are losing billions and the talking heads on CSNBC and Fox Business are losing their minds.

At one point, director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) puts together a long montage that’s just people checking stock prices and uttering obscenities.

A lot of the film feels like this — aggressive and fast and loud and jumpy. It could be that because the story deals with a phenomenon that spread through memes and Reddit forums and TikTok clips, Gillespie is concerned about viewers’ attention spans. He tends to rotate rapidly through the scattered characters and fill up any moments of potential quiet with an absolutely overpowering soundtrack.

The script, from Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Antisocial Network, glosses over some of the complexities and contradictions that pop up when people are fighting the inequities of capitalism with, um, more capitalism.

And unlike The Big Short, which was so good at explaining the intricacies of the financial system that I remember (briefly) understanding collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, Dumb Money keeps things pretty vague.

That’s not necessarily a problem. The real issue is the script doesn’t compensate with compelling human stories, so scenes of small-time investors agonizing over whether to hold or sell, for instance, don’t really connect.

The comic scenes work better, as when Gabe, preparing to testify on Zoom before Congress, searches his palatial house for a background that looks relatable. (Not the wine collection, his lawyers tell him. Not the ocean view.)

Moments like these deliver a lot of schadenfreudey value, even when Dumb Money’s larger story comes up a bit short.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca