Review: 'Dumb Money' finds humor, and an underdog story about the rigged roulette wheel of Wall Street, in the GameStop stock mess

The mostly true-to-life financial comedy-thriller “Dumb Money” is being sold as a David-vs.-Goliath story — but really it’s an example of how Goliath sometimes can be taken down by a bunch of Davids stuffed in a trench coat.

The movie is a period piece, capturing that far-off era of three years ago — which you know because of people wearing KN-95 masks and being largely isolated from each other. That isolation plays a key role, because it was in that pandemic-induced separation that people sought out other ways to connect, such as looking at stock tips on Reddit.

From his basement, a minor financial functionary named Keith Gill (played by Paul Dano) posts videos, under the web name Roaring Kitty,” talking about stocks he thinks are undervalued and could perform better than Wall Street expects. One company he’s particularly bullish on is GameStop, the video game retailer. Gill thinks it’s underperforming because some Wall Street players are gaming the system (forgive the pun), expecting to short-sell it — cashing out and tanking the stock, which will make the players money but destroy GameStop and leave its employees out of jobs.

Gill’s recommendation is broadcast on the Reddit forum Wall Street Bets — yes, the casino allusions are deliberate, describing a system that’s more gambling than investing — and many people follow his advice. They do so in part because they feel like rebels, sticking it to the Wall Street fat cats, but mostly because the price keeps going up, and they’re making money off their small investments.

The script — by former Wall Street Journal reporters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, adapting a book by Ben Mezrich (whose previous books formed the basis for “The Social Network” and “21”) — introduces us to some folks around the country who took up Gill’s advice and became retail investors. There’s Jenny (America Ferrara), a nurse driving a barely functional car. There’s Marcus (Anthony Ramos), who actually works in a GameStop in a shopping mall. And there’s Harmony (Talia Ryder, from “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”) and Riri (Myha’la, from “Bodies Bodies Bodies”), dating college students who see their investment becoming big enough to pay off their student loans.

But if these folks are making money, somebody must be losing. Those are the Wall Street operatives, the ones who do billion-dollar deals before breakfast and call retail investors “dumb money.” When GameStop’s stock price goes up, their short-sell plans go down — and soon, hedge fund manager Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) is seeking help from billionaire Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio), and then from even bigger billionaire Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman).

Director Craig Gillespie (“I, Tonya”) occasionally has to stop and explain some of the more arcane parts of the story — like how a couple of populist-sounding tech bros, Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan) and Baiju Bhatt (Rushi Kota), went from acting in the retail investors’ behalf to shutting off trading seemingly to benefit the billion-dollar traders. (Griffin denied collusion at the time and to this day — though the movie adds some information in its postscript that is … interesting.)

Much of the drama focuses on Keith Gill, trying to keep his composure when the GameStop stock price goes soaring, making him and his infinitely patient wife, Caroline (Shailene Woodley), millionaires on paper — and drawing commentary from his slacker brother (Pete Davidson) and their parents (Clancy Brown and Kate Burton). Eventually, it all ends up in front of a congressional hearing, which Gillespie cleverly captures by having the fictionalized versions of Gill, Plotkin, Tenev and Griffin being grilled by the real-life members of Congress — making Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the 11th-hour hero of the piece.

Gillespie neatly captures the weird online frenzy of the GameStop affair, as well as the breathless commentary on the 24-hour news cycle and the endless supply of memes and response videos that have become the soundtrack of our modern lives. Taken as a whole, “Dumb Money” is a pretty smart dissection of how messed up the financial system is, and why some very rich people prefer it that way.

——

‘Dumb Money’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive language, sexual material and drug use. Running time: 105 minutes.