Everyone has that friend who’s too into internet culture. They say some odd things, but every once in a while they reference something so out of left field you pee your pants from laughing so hard. Craig Gillespie’s (“Cruella”) “Dumb Money” is that friend in film form.
Chronicling the 2021 battle between Wall Street and Redditors over GameStop stock, the film begins exactly where you’d expect: a “WAP” needle drop. The song introduces key players of this modern “good versus evil” tale, immediately letting the audience know this isn’t a story to be taken too seriously. The stock market true story premise might cause viewers to draw knee-jerk comparisons to the likes of “The Wolf of Wall Street” or “The Big Short,” but that risks ignoring the hilarity of Reddit versus Wall Street. Millions of Redditors (some even at the University of Michigan) driving up the GameStop stock to get rich and combat hedge fund managers trying to short sell it requires a film as comedic as it sounds. The film includes social commentary on the inequity of Wall Street, but its true focal point is a comedic retelling of all the moving parts that allowed normal people to take a stab at the daunting financial institution.
The story is told through a gallery of characters on both sides of the stock battle. The Redditors include nurse Jenny (America Ferrera, “Barbie”), GameStop employee Marcos (Anthony Ramos, “In The Heights”) and debt-ridden college students Riri (Myha’la Herrold, “Bodies Bodies Bodies”) and Harmony (Talia Ryder, “Do Revenge”), all of whom are led by streamer Keith Gill (Paul Dano, “The Fabelmans”) whose internet persona is Roaring Kitty. The Wall Street billionaires are also included so audiences get a glimpse of the chaos that engulfed Wall Street as they faced a man wearing a cat shirt and a sweatband.
Some of the film’s jokes tend to play on current trends and COVID-19 culture, so it might lose steam a few years down the road (though unlikely to lose all of its spark), but if you catch it while it’s hot you won’t regret it. Jokes like Marcos doing a TikTok dance for a company contest are pretty funny now, but will its humor hold up against the test of time? The internet references ground the movie to its specific time period, but the film’s frequent use of niche internet culture may be difficult to understand in the distant future. The movie heavily relies on internet references that might cease to be common knowledge. Those without the lived experience of the quarantine era may fail to enjoy a lot of the film’s humor that is built on current culture and trends.
One of the film’s strengths is its ability to balance the characters’ separate stories, as the majority of characters never interact with each other in person. The story is sectioned off into groups, which only works because of each individual group’s chemistry. The Wall Street hedge fund managers are not up against a conglomerate of stereotypical Redditors, but a crowd of very different people led by Roaring Kitty’s financial advice. Riri and Harmony embody a young-lovers-against-the-world arc, Marcos wants more for himself and his family, and Jenny rounds out the Redditors as a single mom weighed down by debt. The groupings add depth to the Redditors as you can see each character’s motivation for taking a risk as large as going against Wall Street.
Gill’s story is not only carried by Dano’s empathetic performance — affording a man who is written as the head of a Reddit movement more sympathy from audiences than they might normally give — but also by the character’s relationships. Gill is emotionally anchored by his wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley, “The Fallout”), and comedically antagonized by his brother, Kevin (Pete Davidson, “The King of Staten Island”). Davidson is in his element, providing many of the largest laughs throughout the film, but Woodley is arguably underused. With the range she has displayed in the past, it’s disappointing that she was left with little to do other than show unwavering support for her husband and slight frustration with the crowd of strangers outside her home. The pair get little individual characterization, but their relationship with Gill is the invaluable heart of this story. While Gill grapples with the moral uncertainty of leading others against Wall Street at risk of their livelihoods, his wife and brother offer unyielding love and support — though Kevin’s is often veiled in typical sibling fashion. While the film makes creative choices like using vertical videos as transitions to highlight the absurdity of the premise, this heart gives the audience something to connect to. Lying underneath all the TikTok references and Reddit humor, there’s a heartfelt story of a few real people who challenged an inequitable system of Wall Street’s caliber.
The film’s prime is using comedy to connect to the viewers’ everyday experiences. Audiences can relate to Marcos’ uncomfortable conversation with his awkward boss, Harmony accidentally playing the audio from her headphones out loud during a lecture and Jenny defending her niche social media interests to her friend. Small moments like these humanize the rag-tag team of Redditors that act as the “heroes” in this unconventional story. The film doesn’t ignore that this Reddit community has a lot of problematic rhetoric; instead, it makes sure the audience sees these Redditors as the butt of the joke, not the community they are harming. The film shows images and comments directly from the Reddit page without giving the commenters any other part in the film. They are not redeemed by the story and their harmful actions don’t go unseen by the audience. The film’s protagonists are framed as the heroes of the story, but this characterization is not extended to the Reddit community as a whole.
Audiences might walk away from “Dumb Money” wondering if the Reddit versus Wall Street story really needed a whole movie, but when they remember how hard they laughed when Kevin Gill was revealed to be the internet troll “ballz,” the question over what deserves to be a film and what doesn’t won’t seem as important. “Dumb Money” might not be here for the long run, but it’s a feel-good movie with a lot of self-aware humor and heart, making a fun night for all who dare to use their dumb money on tickets.
Daily Arts Contributor Gaby Cummings can be reached at gabyc@umich.edu.