Rent Dumb Money on Amazon Video (paid link) // Buy the book (paid link)
Written by: Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo, Ben Mezrich (based on the book "The Antisocial Network" by)
Directed by: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D'Onofrio, America Ferrera, Myha'la, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Seth Rogen, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, Clancy Brown, Dane DeHaan
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
When a rogue investor and basement YouTuber pours his passion and savings into the failing company Gamestop, it turns Wall Street upside down.
Verdict
You'd think this was some kind of fiction if it hadn't actually happened. It's an absolutely ridiculous premise. The movie is okay, but it's the historical account this presents that almost makes this worth watching. This is an event that many people don't understand, even the people involved. This tries to provide clarity, and it's easy enough to root against a ridiculously rich CEO.
It depends.
Review
This is similar to The Big Short as both depict real events that hinged on shorting investments. The latter is slicker and a better education whereas this movie depicts an outright crazy event. The events of Dumb Money are explained mainly through the hive mind and short attention span of the internet which just isn't as compelling.
This starts with hedge fund managers freaking out about Gamestop stock and the guy driving the surge, Keith Gill (Paul Dano). Gill is a regular guy making Youtube videos in his basement. His niche is investing, and he thinks he has an edge with Gamestop. When the stock begins to rise, internet hive mind and the desire to get rich with little effort further fuel the rush. The hedge fund managers know this rise in the stock isn't sustainable.
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| Paul Dano plays Keith Gill |
These people on the internet got ahead and beat the system on a joke. It's easy to root for that win, and this movie pits us against the hedge fund managers from the start.
This also introduces the Robinhood co-founders. That trading app helped push this event. Anyone could join and make trades with no money. That's why all these college aged people were able to buy in and make the push. It's a perfect confluence. The co-founders seem shady and they refuse to talk about how they are worth billions when their app allows free trading.
This even manages to add corporate regulations and red tape through Marcos (Anthony Ramos) who actually works at a Gamestop to contrast it with the freedom the c-level executives have. The service industry and and its convoluted structure is an easy way to connect to millennials.
A lot of this movie is the continued surprise that the stock keeps going up. The more it rises, the more people want to get on board and get rich. Gill turns fifty thousand into eleven million. It looks easy and of course everyone else wants that easy money. All of that while the underlying message is that the government and businesses won't let hedge funds fail. Robinhood stops trading on Gamestop to cover their own financials. The hope is that stopping trading and shutting down the primary means of communication will cause the stock to drop. Wall Street cheats to win, but it's not the first time.
The characters we've been following start to lose money as the stock drops. They're ahead of where they started, but losing money you never had still hurts. Then the stock starts increasing and you wonder how high it will go. It was always tenuous at best. The house always wins, but this is the rare case where the consumer, at least some of them, gets a win.
Has there ever been a coordinated run on Wall Street like this? This even changed how hedge funds viewed risk. Making it easy for everyone to trade led to this, and even that's rooted in greed. Everyone in this movie wants to make money. Wall Street's own greed enabled this. They didn't think it would ever come back to bite them.
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