Dumb Money review: Spectacular cast delivers the goods in film about GameStop short squeeze

Paul Dano stars as Keith Gill, a small-time mutual fund employee who does a little trading, a lot of jogging and minor influencing as a side hustle. (Screen grab from Dumb Money trailer/YouTube/Sony Pictures)

"I won't take investment advice from a guy in a cat shirt", a medical assistant says to a friend he believes is financially imprudent, in the rip-roaring Dumb Money. The implication being that someone shouldn’t take financial advice from people who don’t look like they know what they are talking about. It's a moment that pointedly captures the rotten essence of Wall Street money, and everything it projects for the gullible and the meek. We are fed the idea that people in suits and ties who brazenly parade their wealth, drop numbers and punch metaphorical holes into the walls of a casual conversation, know their greasy way around the economy. Their sense of authority doesn’t just exhibit knowledge, but also power. But sometimes, that elusive, casually dressed prudence can come from anywhere, including from places that men in suits condescend to or regard as culturally illiterate. Dumb Money is a rustling, heartfelt romp through a moment in American modern history that many refer to as the 'French Revolution of American Finance'. It may not exactly have changed things, but it does undeniably offer the thrill of something epochal and system-altering.

Paul Dano stars as Keith Gill, a small-time mutual fund employee who does a little trading, a lot of jogging and minor influencing as a side hustle. Gill, by the way, has a thing for cats and bandanas as well. Under the online names RoaringKitty and DeepFuckingValue, Gill makes hammy, amateur-looking videos where he shares his investment suggestions, portfolio hacks alongside his actual balance sheet. Gill, a Wall Street cynic, is a soft-spoken man of jangled nerves, who balances his stock obsessions with his duties as a loving husband and a committed father. In one scene he practically makes one of his squishy little tele-tubby-ish videos with his kid by his side. Disarmingly this is a dressing down of the image economic alacrity or corporate elitism are often framed through. There is an obvious reason we fall for it, and though this film won’t say it out loud, it’s a message subversively coded into the goofy tenderness of its protagonist.

Gill is bullish about the stock of GameStop, a videogames and computer accessories company that is down in the dumps, and suggests anything but a resurgence or redemption of sorts. It’s a dead bet to most experts. But deep in the company’s books, Gill believes, another story is brewing. When giant Wall Street hedge funds bet against GameStop, i.e., put their money behind the stock's decline, Gill and his sprawling coterie of followers from Reddit and YouTube, decide to huddle and collectively buy. It's called a 'Short Squeeze' but the nuances of it all are incidental to a story that breathes and expels a quietly revolutionary energy. Dumb Money isn't good because its on-point about the details of a fairly public episode (which it is) but because it does so through some terrifically witty writing, lifted by a sparkling cast at the peak of its powers.

Directed by Craig Gillespie, Dumb Money features a startling ensemble cast, too long to even list. Among the notable performances pushing this romp into top gear are Pete Davidson as Gill's unmissable, foul-mouthed stoner brother, Seth Rogen as a naive hedge fund CEO (never thought I'd see that) and Shailene Woodley as the supporting wife.

The film makes it a point to also materially invoke those who made this legendary virtual battle between a bunch of ‘Redditors’ and Wall Street egotists, an epic of meme-worthy modern proportions. There is the despairing broke nurse, a couple of students burdened by loans and, somewhat ironically, a down-on-his-luck GameStop store employee. Uniformly beleaguered, this pits the underdog in a straight dash against the bulls of America's moneyed corridors. The actual saga more of a mixed pile, but it helps the narrative to strain the premise’s elasticity as a straight battle between the undermined, the impoverished and the upper 1 percent.

An underdog story with meme, cats, teeth and let-loose cuss words. Nothing could be better for a slow October. And for all of that angst and anger at times resentment and dejection, Paul Dano is pitch-perfect as the graceful vessel for collective defiance. Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them wear cat T-shirts and bizarre martial art bandanas.

Dumb Money is the kind of smashing, turbulent Wall Street caper that dumbs things down just enough, and packages them with the glee of someone who has found a crowd-pleasing tale of streetwise rebellion. Unlike the The Big Short, it's uninterested in exposing Wall Street megalomania (except the one scene in which a hedge fund owner feeds an actual pig on his domestic rug) and is instead tailored to convince you that you too can pull these hallowed, institutional frauds down. It's another thing if it is actually doable because Big Money or Dumb Money, whatever you want to call it, eventually returns to the top of the pyramid. From those of us down here, life-affirming pipe dreams like Dumb Money and stories like Gill’s make that perch at the top look and feel a whole lot accessible. So what if it isn’t.