The world of finance is an elusive one to many. With billions of dollars seeming to be funnelled almost daily into the pockets of a select few by their betting on the lives of businesses, is truly an area where a film can tell a good underdog story. Craig Gillespie’s latest film, Dumb Money, tells the recent underdog true story of the GameStop stock mania that had “Redditors” battling it out with these billionaires, who were directly betting on the downfall of the company. While quite a spectacular true story to follow in real time, the film, unfortunately, seems to tackle this true story much too soon, attempting to tell a story in a film that audiences probably watched on television news in lockdown just 2 years earlier. So while Paul Dano shines as the leading Redditor Keith Gill, the film is far too packed with sidelined stories and attempts at being the next best star-studded true story film to say anything more than just retelling what could have been read on Wikipedia.

Dumb Money follows the real-life underdog Keith Gill in 2021, as he sunk all of his savings into short-squeezing GameStop and used his knowledge to convince others to follow suit. Titled Dumb Money in reference to the term hedge fund managers call the ordinary people who invest in the stock market, Gill is anything but dumb. A whiz at understanding the stock market and the billionaires behind it, the film tells the story of Gill as he initiated the short squeeze of the GameStop stock causing major issues for the uber-rich who shorted the stock, anticipating its demise. In said short-squeeze, Gill used his online platform and presence on Reddit to convince other, ordinary people, to invest in the GameStop stock to shoot up the price, after noticing that many investors had anticipated the bankruptcy of GameStop and bet against it (shorting the stock).

It seems that although the events do lead themselves to be a very dramatic and inspiring underdog story, the major fault of the film is that the events happened far too recently. Just over 2 years ago, many of the very people in the audience of Dumb Money were watching the real-life action go down on the news, or at least hearing about it in some form in their daily lives or online. While Dumb Money does add more context to what occurred in this GameStop stock mania, it fails to add much more than what could realistically be read in about 2 minutes upon a quick Google search.

As a result of this lack of need for more information, the film becomes jam-packed with side characters and adjacent stories that miss the mark on saying anything new. Rather, this comes off as an attempt to more forcefully puch the whole underdog story down the throats of viewers, with a lack of care for the true heart at the centre of these events. Sure, this is a truly inspirational story about “sticking it to the man” and “eating the rich”, but when the side characters are as undeveloped as they are in this film, they lack any sort of sentiment to the viewers, and come off as mere padding to this story that is just far too recent to warrant a 104-minute runtime. This ends up feeling like a mere attempt at a recreation of the success of The Big Short (2015), forgetting the importance of the more complete real-life story behind the film and its well-paced, unique genre-bending take on the story many lived through in the 2000s.

The GameStop stock events are quite a curious thing to think about, with the timing of the short squeeze occurring while much of the world was still in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite their presence on Reddit long before the lockdowns, the pandemic must have had much to do with the influx of Redditor involvement, as more people had more time on their hands than they ever had in recent years, but also had nowhere to go in this spare time but home and the internet. The pandemic was also one of the major reasons for this film seeming quite less astonishing than The Big Short. With very little going on in the pop-culture world, coverage of this story reached many more people, with those at home having very little other choice but to tune in on the television and online to the daily news. So on top of the events happening much too recently to warrant a feature film, the news of GameStop and Reddit reached so many more people because of the lockdowns, thus resulting in a film like Dumb Money that feels like a cheap recreation of the excitement and confusion many felt just 2 years earlier, while watching the news.

While these issues exist with the screenplay, the film remains entertaining, much due to the strong performance from Paul Dano at the centre of the film. Without much to work with, Dano reflects the humble and passionate real-life man, Keith Gill, at the root of this market-altering story. His chemistry with Pete Davidson who plays his brother is surprisingly there, despite Davidson playing his usual good-for-nothing, snarky role. The other players, including Shailene Woodley, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Sebastian Stan, and Seth Rogen aren’t terrible, but unfortunately, due to the lack-lustre script, don’t stand out in any meaningful way, or inspire much from the performances of the other players as often seen in an ensemble film such as this.

For some, the insights the film provides into the real-life events of the 2021 GameStop short squeeze will be entertaining, especially for those who have thus far (somehow) remained unaware of what occurred. But with events this recent, including the Reddit stock mania and the jokes about other far too recent major world developments, it seems to be a film that has come at least 10 years too early, in a year already jam-packed with attempts at biopics and real-life stories. Paul Dano’s performance as teal-life stock whiz and Redditor Keith Gill carries the film, but choosing to pack the film with o many other big names and side stories adjacent to Gill’s takes away from the emotional dramatic line this film could have had, had it come out in say the 2030s or 40s.

Dumb Money was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. Image courtesy of TIFF.