As a prominent and allegedly corrupt Wall Street investor, Dumb Money directly attacks my livelihood in its faithful retelling of the 2021 GameStop stock wildness. My hedge was thoroughly unfunded through this period but as you will all be delighted to know, I am back on top, burning money to save space.
This film breaks the mould of the other films in its genre of WIkipedia led films. That term has been coined and copyrighted by myself as a film that takes its plot directly from the WIkipedia page, a complicated naming convention for what is a complicated form of filmmaking. Unlike some of the other films in this new age genre, it adds in smart and quick writing with some comedic moments to give it more life, along with an impressive cast to make it a more watchable and less of a readable experience.
Dumb Money takes place in 2021, the year where we all slowly gave up our Covid hobbies and projects, to sink into a deeply depressive and dissociative hole. Well, at least that was my experience, not being a frontline worker or having a job that was of any worth to society’s betterment. Some of those essential services were gracefully provided to us by GameStop, which unrelentingly kept their doors open, allowing us all to keep our civilised Funko collections up to date.
Keith Gill stands at the front of the story, taking an interest in stock and its potential in this trying time. He saw a gap in the investment market which Wall Street missed. This foresight allowed him, and a whole host of internet savvy Reddit users to break the pattern of Wall Street and bring some of the big players to their knees. We see accounts from a couple of characters throughout this film, getting a very panoramic view of those involved in this story. We get Keith at the helm, followed by a nurse, college students, a GameStop employee and then the big boys in Wall Street. They all get their shared screen time, allowing you to form connections with their stories, and cheer for their success, or failure.
We spend less time on the “Man” and more with the “people” in this “Stick it to the Man” tale. While the billionaires' floundering is an interesting aspect of the film, and their losses add some stakes, there is a lot more humanity in the people who are fighting to stay up on their investments, tracking every rise in the stock price. The focus on these people gives the film so much more tension as you emotionally invest in their financial investments.
All this is balanced pretty well, keeping the story moving and not getting bogged down with really trying to get you to connect to the people, fleshing them out with sad backstories. You get who they are, and why they’re in it, and the film knows that’s basically enough to be invested in their successes.
We’re watching a true story, that most of us lived through and in my case, from the outside looking in. It’s interesting to see this portrayal of the story from the spearhead of this movement and the importance the filmmakers put into the accuracy of the retelling. This of course is a testament to the intrigue of the actual story, especially considering the legal landmines that would have had to be avoided for this film to exist.
In the Q&A with the director, Craig Gillespie, he spoke about this and the process that the writing team of Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo had while creating this film. He spoke about their approach of taking a lot of the story from the limited articles they had, the direct dialogue and the creative liberties they expanded on from some of the restrictive information they had to work with.
The matter of fact storytelling is aided by the overly static look to the film, with very minimal camera movement throughout. With this, they get a lot of angles for each scene, allowing freedom in the edit to control the pace of the story, speeding up cuts where we’re supposed to feel more tension. While they have this opportunity, they don’t try to ever push anything too far, not taking huge risks in its style.
No matter what camera movement you employ, the cast of characters in this film help to add energy and heart to it with Paul Dano bringing an accurately cringe yet endearing character in Keith Gill. America Ferrera and Shailene Woodley bring a lot of heart to the film, keeping it grounded and levelling out the energy that the likes of Anthony Ramos or Pete Davidson bring. They also cast primarily comedic actors in the roles of the billionaires, restricting them to be uptight businessmen, and I like that.
They match these serious business men with some crazy needle drops, starting off strong with WAP. We follow with Humble, Savage and a particularly enjoyable Boss drop from Little Simz. These songs are blended into the world mostly by having them act like a lead into another scene, having the song play over a scene and then beginning the next scene with a character listening to that song. They also have a couple of opposite examples of this, with a character singing a song, and then playing the studio version over the beginning of the next scene. I liked this approach, as they usually used these techniques to jump from the billionaires to the online traders, or visa versa.
Now that I’ve said Visa Versa, I think its time to wrap up. I enjoyed this film, and its energetic yet grounded approach to telling this story. The inclusion of memes and online buzz was, at points a little overindulgent in its portrayal, highlighting some of the toxicity of the community. I have no doubts that these were accurate, I still don’t think they’re needed. There are ways to express a lack of political correctness other than including quite a few slurs sprinkled in from these commenters. I won’t take points away for that, just note it in my little snowflake brain to cry about later.
Finally, the setting of this film is a perfect capsule of time, where the wealth disparity in the world was more obvious than we’ve seen in recent times. Where we had people scraping by, fighting to keep their jobs and homes amidst business closures and a change in the economy. We also had the Hedge Fund bros who in this film discuss flying their staff out to a remote community to continue work, or buying a mansion next to their own to knock down and build a tennis court, so they don’t have to leave to play. It sets up such an easy hero and villain dynamic in the film, as you root for the underdog, because we are that underdog. Unless you’re a billionaire, in which case, I love your work and would love to hedge fund my shopping addiction.
Actually finally. If we could have more of these Wikipedia movies follow this pattern, actually caring about the story they’re telling, I’m on board for it.
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