DUMB MONEY (2023)

It's hard to make an engaging film where the most dramatic moments involve characters looking at computers, checking apps, posting stuff to social media, joining Zoom calls, and watching talking heads on TV. The problem is compounded here given that the real-life timeframe of events (involving investor Keith Gill's role in the GameStop short squeeze) puts us smack dab in the middle of COVID lockdowns, necessitating that you have to keep a lot of the characters trapped in their homes and at a distance from one another. So the fact that this works as well as it does is really a small miracle. Thanks go to Craig Gillespie's able direction, a talented cast (Dano and Rogen are the MVPs, but Nick Offerman and Sebastian Shaw contribute fun slimeball turns) and a bangin' soundtrack (music supervisor Susan Jacobs earns her check with some zesty needle-drops, and composer Will Bates turns in a propulsive yet melancholy electronic score in a "Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross" mode).

There's also something fascinating about the screenplay—this is effectively an ensemble film in which the majority of the characters never actually cross paths (even their climactic Zoom testimonies are kept distinct from one another). Honestly this feels appropriate for a film that's about how viral phenomena ripples through the internet, cutting across social strata as it goes—and I wish that the film did some more interesting things with this. At its best this can feel like a "ragtag band of underdogs" story updated for the social media age, though there's really only one set of dramatic questions available for the supporting underdog characters (will they hold or sell; cash out or go broke), so they end up feeling a bit underdeveloped. This leads the material to devolve slightly into a "one man standing up for the little guy" story, and the beats there begin to feel a little shopworn (Gill's activities put tension on his relationship with his wife, etc.). It ends with where that kind of story should end (Gill's modestly dramatic testimony in a Zoom Congressional hearing), but this means that a lot of the interesting loose ends of the story get relegated to end-of-film title cards.

All in all, though, this makes the most of its limitations without quite transcending them, and I largely enjoyed myself—though I will need to memory-hole the inclusion of a snippet of audio in which Robinhood execs are grilled in a Clubhouse chatroom by none other than Elon Musk, cringeworthily (if briefly) framed here as a true man of the people.

A ★★★½ review of Dumb Money (2023)

It’s hard to make an engaging film where the most dramatic moments involve characters looking at computers, checking apps, posting stuff to social media, joining Zoom calls, and watching talking heads on TV. The problem is compounded here given that the real-life timeframe of events (involving investor Keith Gill’s role in the GameStop short squeeze) puts us smack dab in the middle of COVID lockdowns, necessitating that you have to keep a lot of the characters trapped in their homes and at a distance from one another. So the fact that this works as well as it does is really

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