Dumb Money Review: A Contemporary Rumination on a Global Climate
In a world designed for the richest to thrive while the rest of us try to stay above water, films like Dumb Money are welcomed catharsis.
Dumb Money is the first feature film screenplay from Orange Is the New Black writers Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, and they couldn't have found a more perfect director in Craig Gillespie. Based on the book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich, the film follows the true story of everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning troubled retailer GameStop into the world's hottest company.
Craig Gillespie has a stack of great movies under his belt, including Oscar winners I, Tonya and Cruella. This time, he's sticking it to the man in this cowboy story with a stellar soundtrack of one guy who accidentally started a revolution. Gillespie understands something about compelling protagonists going against the grain in thrilling underdog stories that make us root for the everyman. What differs in this film from Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding and Emma Stone as Estella is that Paul Dano as Keith Gill or "Roaring Kitty" is pretty chaste in comparison. We don't love him because he's a good guy gone bad. We love him because he's just a guy in his basement who "likes the stock".
Gillespie is great at heightening reality to the point where it borderlines surrealism, ironically making it more human. Sometimes, these larger-than-life circumstances feel like getting lost down a rabbit hole, and Dumb Money takes that idea and runs with it. The ensemble cast is fantastic. Not one person misses a beat, and Gillespie creates a world that feels like our own but also this extension of the hyper-online existence in which we live.
Filmmakers are still figuring out how to embrace the online in movies, but it feels like this year, there is more of a push to embrace the digital natives. Wrapped up among memes, Reddit, and livestreaming is a sensitive and beautiful story about how we're all just doing our best to survive.
Most characters in the film have regular jobs and spend their day worrying about debt and how they'll get by month to month. It feels ridiculous to call this concept revolutionary, but it feels it when multiple conversations in the runtime focus on financial concerns. Debt looms large over us all, but it becomes part of the everyday. Sometimes, films make this concept feel too on the nose, but while there's little that's subtle about Dumb Money, it somehow feels truer in the hands of Gillespie.
The all-star cast includes the likes of Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, America Ferrera, Vincent D'Onofrio, Nick Offerman, Seth Rogen, Shailene Woodley, Anthony Ramos, Talia Ryder, Myha'la Herrold and Rushi Kota. Dumb Money is an ensemble piece, but there's no one you spend time with secretly wishing you'll get back to. Every character is compelling, each deserving their own film to fully dissect the intricacies of how they navigated this period of thrilling risk. In a time when the U.S. was concurrently wading through a pandemic and the fallout of a reality star's presidency, apathy was at an all-time high. When you have little left to lose, why not risk it all?
What seems like a fun night out at the movies becomes a super contemporary rumination on a global climate and how we respond to the rising devastation wrought upon us daily from the 1%. Dumb Money is both uplifting and infuriating and will have you eager to learn more and maybe even have you wondering how you can also get a slice of the pie.
