Direction: Craig Gillespie
Country: USA
This biographical comedy-drama depicting the stock short squeeze of video game retailer GameStop in January 2021 leans more towards being laughably tame than audaciously bold. Directed by Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007; I, Tonya, 2017) and written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, the film represents a feeble adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book, The Antisocial Network.
Although it’s an ensemble cast that populates the screen, Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, 2007; Love & Mercy, 2014) takes central stage as Keith Gill, a modest financial analyst and YouTuber operating under the moniker Roaring Kitty. Those who followed Gill's strategies had the potential to amass an unimaginable amount of money in the unpredictable game dictated by the stock market's ebbs and flows. Personal decisions played a pivotal role.
Had the filmmaker dared to dip below the surface, and maybe we would have a better film. Dumb Money fails to adequately develop its characters, making them feel unrelatable and causing the narrative to drag. What are audiences supposed to do with this, anyway? In the midst of the constant buzz surrounding the stock market, Gillespie's film struggles to find its footing.
His work fails to get under your skin because it's content with poking you in the eye. The material offered the potential to create something thought-provoking and didactic, but he squandered the chance by allowing an invertebrate scenario. Hence, there’s no need to go to the movie theater to measure the extent of the damage because what the film tells you in 104 minutes could be absorbed from reading a brief paragraph.
