‘Dumb Money’ Review: Paul Dano Leads Stock Market Revolution in Sharp Comedy — TIFF 2023

In real life, the minute someone starts talking about stocks, my eyes glaze over and my brain takes a quick vacation. Like many of you, I am sure, I have tried and failed to understand the stock market — but what's annoying is that I still feel like if I really studied hard I'd crack the code and become a zillionaire. Dumb Money, the extremely funny new movie from I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie, focuses on the real-life market mayhem that peaked in January 2021, wherein an army of amateurs linked hands for a moment and, maybe for political reasons or maybe just for a cooped-up pandemic-era joke, completely altered the landscape of the United States economy.

Leading the revolution, from his basement, is a likable dork named Keith Gill (Paul Dano). He works in the lower rungs of finance in Boston, but his hobby is wearing dopey cat T-shirts, strapping a red tie across his head Rambo-style and making loopy YouTube videos for the Reddit board Wall Street Bets. Wisely, Gillespie and Dano keep the character an enigma: maybe he's a genius, maybe he's a nut, but what matters is that somehow his baffling bullishness concerning GameStop (the low-rent video game store found in dying malls) catches on. Investment novices around the country start throwing a few bucks at the stock while swearing to hold it no matter what. The momentum builds, and suddenly a bunch of nobodies become rich on paper.

While most people likely did this as a goof (and Dumb Money doesn't shy away from showing Reddit to be a vulgar swamp at times) there is a David and Goliath story here. GameStop is a company that most serious investors are "shorting." In other words, rich people are all betting that the company will fail, and when it does, they will get richer. 

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"Shorting" isn't illegal, but its ethics are certainly questionable. (Side bets on someone else losing their livelihood don't exactly feel like a legitimate, adult business to me!) But the personification of anti-GameStop sentiment is represented by Seth Rogen, a buttoned-up rich snob in Florida. Though the two never meet, the enthusiastic weirdo Dano in snowy Massachusetts and he eventually go head-to-head. (Dumb Money, in this respect, makes for a funny revenge sequel to The Fablemans in a way.)

None of Gill's backers ever interact IRL either. Gillespie, aided by a sharp script by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, has created a movie that kinda-sorta exists in cyberspace. This whole phenomenon happened online, so it should make sense that so many of the key characters — America Ferrera's single-mother nurse, Anthony Ramos working a dead-end retail job at GameStop, Talia Ryder and Myha'la Herrold as students already drowning in debt — should be nothing but background noise to one another. Their solidarity is quickly threatened when The Man intervenes and tries to shut down their chatroom and simplified investment tools.

This isn't to say this movie is just people sitting at their computers. Shailene Woodley does a lot with the few scenes she has, giving her lunatic husband Keith unconditional support even though he could tap the "sell" button on his phone and suddenly have $20 million. Pete Davidson is, as ever, hilarious as Keith's Masshole brother, and their parents (Kate Burton and Clancy Brown) get some great laughs in, too. This is a very funny movie.

Dumb Money will inevitably be compared to the Oscar-nominated film The Big Short, which also tried to make a satirical drama out of high finance. This is a much more human picture, with real characters, real relationships and a fundamental acceptance that no one really understands the stock market.

There are also some incredibly gratifying moments involving Tesla-driving ding-dongs getting their comeuppance, which is always welcome. Dumb Money maybe relies too much on cutaways to CNBC, but I'll confess that I'd be totally baffled without them. Instead, I am left dangerously curious. I know the game is rigged, but maybe, just maybe, if I take a few bucks, put it in a stock and let it ride I could hit big? Less effort than going to Vegas. 8.0/10