TIFF 2023: ‘Dumb Money’ Is Too Timely To Be Memorable

The stock market game is all about timing. Days or even a few hours can dictate a person’s fate, with the chance of true wealth hanging by a thread. It’s a dilemma that many characters in Dumb Money are charged with as they stand in solidarity, collectively holding onto the GameStop stock to boost its price despite pressure to sell from the Wall Street giants. Yet, ironically, Craig Gillespie’s look at the GameStop Short Squeeze loses a similar game of timing, as Dumb Money feels like a pre-mature look at an event that just happened less than two years ago, weirdly banking on nostalgia for a time that many people are still reeling from. It sets its sights on the ripples of the incident when more time and patience would have allowed Gillespie to tackle the waves.

The film’s real David vs. Goliath story centers on Keith Gill (Paul Dano), AKA Reddit user “Roaring Kitty,” who, through intensive research, realizes something no one else did—that GameStop’s stock was undervalued. This sentiment stood in stark contradiction to all the powerful hedge fund owners who bet on GameStop to fail by shorting the stock. Gill took to the Subreddit “Wall Street Bets” to detail his findings and encourage everyone to buy the stock— and things went insane, to say the least.

Regrettably, the film doesn’t go deeper into the events than that, dedicating a huge portion of its runtime to the shocked reactions of friends or family of the stockholders. It’s a formula that gets tiresome, especially when it could have used such moments to inform viewers, who are not overly familiar with stock squeezes, on how it all works. Gillespie doubles down on this frustration by grounding so much of the drama around these concepts, resulting in the audience being told how they should feel instead of why. Dumb Money would have greatly benefitted from slowing down and breaking down these concepts and ideas— à la Margot Robbie in a bathtub explaining financial derivatives.

The script, co-penned by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, focuses on the dichotomy of good—Gill and various Redditors like Marcus (Anthony Ramos), Jenny (American Ferrara), and Riri (Myha’la)— and evil through Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio), Ken Griffen (Nick Offerman), and Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan). These contrasting perspectives are used to stress how the elite will do anything to keep their wealth, even if it means denying working people a chance to finally move up in the world— another example of the lies inherent in the American Dream.

But none of these characters, and their respective performances, are given the space to distinguish themselves. In cutting back and forth between so many characters, they all begin to blend into one another, resulting in an experience that never shows us why they are deserving of success or failure. Besides the moments that focus on Gill, Dumb Money’s emotional core quickly begins to stifle and wane.

Moreover, as a cinematic experience, Dumb Money feels like it’s crafted from the leftovers of other, more memorable films. It sits in a space directly between The Big Short and The Social Network, relying on the comedic tone of the former and employing a score too iterative of Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s work in the latter. There’s a distinct lack of identity at the heart of Dumb Money, with its flat cinematography and familiar structure only reinforcing the film as a less-than-definitive account of an incredible and unpredictable true story.

Where the film does succeed is on the comedic front, most noticeably when Gill’s brother Kevin (Pete Davidson) occupies our attention. Davidson’s dry delivery and timing help to ground Dano’s nuanced, gentle demeanor. Yet, the two are not enough to quell the tonal imbalance, as its more serious moments fail to land with impact, burdened by the light and breezy moments that preceded them.

Dumb Money is a fun, easily digestible time at the theatre that contains some great performances and moments but doesn’t provide audiences enough to chew on. Gillespie’s refusal to get viewers on the same page as its characters creates a disconnect that permeates the entire 104-minute runtime. Yet, Gilespie’s film also can’t quite shake the fact that its subject matter is still currently unfolding, and because of that, is the best anyone could have done at this juncture. Timeliness is a currency in Hollywood, but a little more patience here, especially with this story, would have paid great dividends.

Dumb Money screened as part of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.