'Dumb Money': Dumb Movie
This Wall Street movie funded by a Wall Street kid perpetuates the myth that the little guy can win big in the stock market.
Dumb Money, the new film from director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya), desperately wants to be The Big Short, the 2015 film from director and co-writer Adam McKay (Anchorman). It’s not quite the 1:1 comparison of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987) and Ben Younger’s Boiler Room (2000); Younger’s film owed SUCH a debt to Wall Street that it even included a scene where its characters watch, and quote along with, Stone’s picture. Still, the influence of McKay’s work on Gillespie’s movie is more than clear: Both films adopt an acerbically-comedic tone to dramatize actual events concerning the financial sector, both films tell stories that overlap despite their protagonists never meeting, and both films illustrate, to varying degrees, that the whole game is rigged.
Thanks largely to its cast, Dumb Money is an okay-enough movie, so long as you don’t actually put much thought into it. But it’s not in the same league as The Big Short.
This is partially because, as an imitation of another film, it simply doesn’t feel as fresh or surprising as its predecessor, and partially because it’s not as stylistically daring as McKay’s fourth-wall-breaking docudrama.
But it’s mostly because a) the characters in The Big Short are much more engaging, despite the fact that, paradoxically, the characters in Dumb Money are far more relatable, b) The Big Short felt less cynical, despite the fact that, paradoxically, Dumb Money has a more traditionally “happy” Hollywood ending, and c) some of Dumb Money’s political messaging is weirdly conservative, despite the fact that, paradoxically, it presents itself as being progressive.
Adapted by Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo from the nonfiction book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich (the same guy whose tome The Accidental Billionaires became the basis for The Social Network), Dumb Money tells the story of 2021’s GameStop short squeeze. Basically, some rich douchebags (portrayed here by Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, and Vincent D’Onofrio) were shorting GameStop’s stock - meaning they were betting on the company folding and the stock tanking - and this one dude on the Internet, using the handle Roaring Kitty (Paul Dano), convinced a bunch of people to buy up GameStop stock, thereby ruining the rich douchebag’s plans and, theoretically at least, making these amateur traders a lot of money.
When we meet Roaring Kitty, he’s sufficiently broke that he makes his beer purchase based solely on which brand is cheapest. He has a wife (Shailene Woodley) and a baby, a ne’er-do-well brother (Pete Davidson) who works as a delivery guy, and blue collar parents (Kate Burton and Clancy Brown) entering their golden years; his acolytes (America Ferrara, Anthony Ramos, and Myha'la Herrold, among others) are all similarly working-class characters in need of money to support their families and pay off debts. One of the central conflicts of the film is that everyone keeps telling these people to cash out and sell their GameStop stock while the price is still up - but none of them want to do that, because it would screw over their fellow traders and benefit the rich douchebags (they keep using the phrase “diamond hands,” as in “hold the line”). Except eventually, because we live in a capitalist society, the rich douchebags start fighting back, and our heroes learn that, despite what the financial world would have us believe, the little guy can’t actually get ahead the stock market.
The characters in The Big Short are the inverse of the characters in Dumb Money, in that they’re financial insiders who have the foresight to short a stock everyone at the time believed to be invincible, not amateurs trying to bolster a stock everyone at the time believed to be vulnerable. They’re all wrestling with complex ethical issues, not least of which is that they are, in essence, profiting from millions of Americans’ despair. And that complexity, not-coincidentally, saves them from being positively despicable, leaves room for us to laugh, and makes us wanna go on this journey with them despite that journey’s inevitably-tragic outcome.
The characters in Dumb Money, on the other hand, are not especially complex, I think in part because they don’t have to be - that they are inherently “likable,” and that their conflicts are far more identifiable to the majority of the audience, is enough to skate by. The filmmakers didn’t need them to be interesting to get the viewer on their side, so they just kinda didn’t bother.
At the same time, the stakes for these characters are so high as to do a disservice to the story’s comedic tone. If the plan fails and they lose all their money, they lose all their money. One character in The Big Short suggests that he may have to move back in with his parents if the strategy doesn’t pay off, but you never get the sense that any of those guys may actually go hungry. In Dumb Money, when America Ferrara’s character refuses to sell her GameStop stock despite being up hundreds of thousands of dollars, you kinda wanna jump into the movie and shake her, because she’s a single mom with young kids at home. It’s like watching Will Smith chase his dream in The Pursuit of Happyness, even though chasing his dream also means making his five-year-old son sleep in a public bathroom. It’s like… MOTHERFUCKER, YOU HAVE RESPONSIBILITIES, GODDAMNIT! The potentially-serious consequences for the characters in Dumb Money undermines the comedy; it’s just hard to laugh when the prospect of impoverished children is rattling around in the back of your head.
And then there’s the ending, which feels insincere, and which may or may not have nefarious origins.
[SPOILERS]
Dumb Money would have you believe that David defeated Goliath. In an epilogue, we’re told that one of the rich douchebags had to shut down his hedge fund as a result of this whole fiasco, that Wall Street is now being much less cavalier about gambling on the downfall of the working class, and that Roaring Kitty and most of his followers ultimately did make a lot of money off the short squeeze.
Except that’s all bullshit.
In reality, Roaring Kitty (his real name is Keith Gill) has since left the public eye; he didn’t participate in the making of the book or the movie, and not much seems to be known about his life today. Additionally, other than the rich douchebags, he’s the only character who’s based on a real person - Roaring Kitty’s fans/co-conspirators are all fictional. So, yeah, I’m sure they’re all perfectly happy not actually existing and therefore not having to worry about their families.
As for that one rich douchebag? He started a new fund the year after the one portrayed in the movie closed! He’s apparently living in Miami with his family, and continues to have more money than God. The GameStop incident was, at worst, a mild nuisance for him, like having to abandon his vacation home for a day while exterminators fumigate.
Dumb Money’s B.S. conclusion would be troubling enough if the movie didn’t sometimes espouse Trumpian world views. The only time any religion is mentioned, ever, is when one of rich douchebags is seen celebrating a Jewish holiday with his family (complete with yarmulkes); I don’t know if it’s to the movie’s credit or not that this character is also portrayed as being subservient to the other, richer rich douchebags (this could suggest that Jews are as indentured to the One Percent as anyone, but it could also suggest that Jews are just sniveling weaklings who are willing to sell out their would-be compatriots in exchange for perks). It would be one thing if the character’s Judaism was used to deepen their inner conflict, forcing them to wrestle with the ways in which their actions and their faith are at direct odds, but that never happens, so in a movie that’s all about class warfare, it just feels like a reinforcement of negative stereotypes.
There’s also a moment, played for cheers, when Anthony Ramos’ character refuses to keep wearing a mask at work (he calls it a “face diaper”) despite the ongoing pandemic. I stress again that Ramos’ character isn’t based on a real person, so this moment comes purely from the imagination of the filmmakers. And since Ramos has been one of the “good guys” the whole movie, it’s equating fighting back against Wall Street with fighting back against the CDC, which is plainly ludicrous.
And finally, the picture two of the more “villainous” characters take time to stress that they’re immigrants, which is supposed to be funny because they’re exploiting their backgrounds for PR purposes, but also kinda implies that you need to be weary of non-natives - especially because there’s no contrasting immigrant characters to counter-balance these assholes.
Further muddying the movie’s ethical waters is the fact that it was financed by Teddy Schwartzman. Teddy Schwartzman’s father is Stephen A. Schwartzman, the co-founder and CEO of Blackstone Group, an investment firm that manages approximately a trillion dollars in assets; he was also was briefly chairman of Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum. This being the case, it’s hard not to at least wonder if the ending is meant to keep the plebes in line via the promise of false hope. The One Percent love to tell the rabble fables about how “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” even though they themselves horde wealth like Scrooge McDuck. Of course, The Big Short was financed by billionaires, too, but at least it had the good sense not to be a dick about it, y’know?