There is an urgency in every way about Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money, which is equal parts entertaining as it is derivative, as much as it is mature as much as it is brash. This is the very recent story of the short squeeze that was brought on with the falling stock of Game-stop that ultimately in many ways was the story of the little man trying and succeeding for a time to get one over on wall street, or at least that is the propulsive narrative that Dumb Money takes, with it’s script by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo from the non-fiction book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich. Dumb Money is very enjoyable and has a surprising maturity to it despite the supposed surface level immaturity of many of its figures, but is never for me something that truly resonates.
The world of finance told through slightly immature stylings to bring the complexities of that world to a broader audience has become a genre unto itself of recent, with the most famous examples being that of Big Short and Wolf of Wall Street, and although I like all three of these films (including Dumb Money in the conversation) – there is only Wolf that I would consider one of the great movies of our time, although I am well aware of the mass popularity of Short. Other than the obvious factors of having one of the greatest directors of all time delivering the material, I can’t exactly put my finger on why the abrasive and obnoxious and all-knowing factor of fourth wall breaks and “none of this sh*t matters” works so well for me in Wolf, but is so cringey for me in Big Short, but thankfully Dumb Money has no such factor, instead the screenplay employs simple title cards and a few choice internet based montages. Although my postscript note illuminates how I feel on those montages, overall one feels that Dumb Money is a slightly stylistically simpler and more mature way to tell the tale that never really revels or adopts filmically the nature of the figures it is presenting, beyond that of its music choices which perfectly place us into a brash world of TikTok’s and memes that thankfully is never too annoying. Gillespie has a restraint here that was present in I, Tonya and sorely missing in his Cruella and Pam and Tommy, even if we are desperately removed from the wonderfully subtle days of his brilliant Lars and the Real Girl.
This is a film stacked
with wonderful performances by multiple, multiple well known faces in a similar
way to Big Short in many ways, but never once plays into the way that
big names are being used to make this story interesting. Instead here a series of
great character actors are employed to make the variety of people this story
effected to the screen with great effect and a very human element. People such
as the great Anthony Ramos, America Ferrera, Myha’la Herrold and Talia Ryder
present human and grounded performances that show the range of this true story’s
impact. On the other hand, subtle humorous turns from Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman
and Sebastian Stan offer up the polar opposite of this story and show of those
wholly unaffected in so many ways. Paul Dano however is the central performance
that brings much of the story’s arc to the centre. Dano manages to make a
seemingly ridiculous figure one of immense humanity and is certainly the film’s
lynchpin and strongest asset. Overall Gillespie frames this story as a joyous
taking down of the big man and the story of the poor triumphing even if only
for a little while over the rich, one can make the argument that is too
simplistic and reductive and removes some of the complexities of the truth here,
but for a streamlined entertaining film with a solid core – it works in this
case.
I had a very enjoyable time with the 7/10 Dumb Money, however I just can’t say that this film will stick with me. It has everything a movie like this could ever need, however overall one just can’t get away from the online facets of the story and how overall they are not especially visually interesting. This is a tale that we are so immediately knowledgeable of at this very moment that it feels at times redundant, however in the future I have no doubt that with the entertaining and efficient manner in which Gissespie has told this tale and captured that very specific moment that is still not very presented on screen, Dumb Money is I feel a film for the future even if contradictabley I don’t feel like it will have much of a lasting memory for me.
P.S. A symptom of telling stories in the modern age of the internet is how film-makers can make usage of these materials such as apps and the like in interesting ways, Gillespie here just shows us in multiple montages and although this is efficient at portraying information and the mood at different stages of the film, it is never wholly visually interesting and is a trend that is getting so widespread that I feel a straw is soon to land on the camel’s back.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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