This is a real movie! One might be forgiven for figuring a film starring the likes of Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen etc. with a title like Dumb Money to be a silly trifle. Yes, it has some laughs but this movie has a story, told well.

The title is a term supposedly used by big time hedge fund traders to refer to small time individual stock traders. The hedge fund folks trade in such huge volume that their influence is massive. In 2020 and 2021, a movement led by a nerdy guy in suburban Boston pushed up the price of Gamestop stock. 

Keith Gill (Paul Dano) AKA Roaring Kitty is that guy. The film also focuses on fictional folks who get into the market, mainly via the Robinhood app, and ride with Gill to keep buying Gamestop stock. Among the actors portraying those citizen stock traders are America Ferrara as a hardworking early Covid era nurse and Anthony Ramos as a clerk in a Gamestop store.

The hedge fund guys figure to make money by shorting the Gamestop stock, betting that it will crash. Real life money men, shown living in luxurious surroundings, are Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman) and Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio looking quite different from how you’ve seen him before).

Davidson is Keith Gill, Kevin’s brother. He has my favorite line in the movie—sorry for spoiling—when he tells his parents, “Doordash IS a real job. I’m a first responder!” 

Also in the cast are Shailene Woodley as Kevin’s wife and Sebastian Stan as Vlad Tenev, one of the co-founders of Robinhood. (Robinhood gets a considerable amount of credit/blame for the volatility of Gamestop stock. The fictional traders become upset when the app shuts down trading in a credit crunch.)

Director Craig Gillespie punctuates Dumb Money with internet meme videos and TV news clips—some genuine, others cleverly constructed. The film moves quickly with segments that jump between scenarios to an energetic hip-hop soundtrack. 

Dumb Money begs comparison with the 2015 film The Big Short which told the story of people who made money while many Americans suffered financial losses—many even lost their homes! during the housing crisis of the late aughts. Dumb Money actually does a better job of relating what happened during these more recent events than The Big Short did telling what happened in this century’s first decade. The Big Short has many memorable scenes and a stunning cast but did not detail the big picture, admittedly complicated, as clearly as it should have. The script for Dumb Money is by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo from the non-fiction book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich. 

Among the film’s executive producers are the Winklevoss twins, made famous in the 2010 film The Social Network. Dumb Money is rated R. No nudity but lots of language.