Dumb Money
Dir: Craig Gillespie
Cert:15 | ★★★★✩

The story of how a group of Reddit users banded together to take down Wall Street is told in this hugely entertaining biopic from I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie.

In Dumb Money, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo’s film adaptation of The Antisocial Network, we meet Keith Gill, a small-time stocktrader and YouTube streamer, as he becomes the group’s unofficial leader and guru.

The year is 2020, and like the rest of the world, Gill is stuck at home with his wife Caroline and their newborn daughter and very little to do.

Which is why he has been appearing on YouTube under the pseudonym “Roaning Kitty”, in a meme-heavy daily show dedicated to the stock market.

In real-life Gill became the poster-child for anti-Wall Street sentiment when thousands of other shareholders decided to join him in investing in GameStop, a gaming supply company largely expected to fold.

Despite making millions of dollars on the stock, Gill and his supporters refuse to sell, even when Robinhood, a trading platform they’d been using, decides to pull the plug on their buying more shares.

Meanwhile, having bet heavily on the same company’s imminent demise, venture capitalist Gabe Plotkin finds himself in a sticky spot and several billions of dollars out of pocket.

This film is bound to be compared to Adam McKay’s The Big Short, but in reality its playful tone and frequent nods to internet meme culture mean Dumb Money has more in common with Fincher’s The Social Network.

And unlike The Big Short’s strident anti-capitalism, Dumb Money’s line is better described as “let’s stick it to the big man”, and “greed is good”.

At the time, some Reddit users expressed extreme antisemitic sentiment towards the Wall Street players, and it is disappointing to see this underplayed in the film.

The story would have been told better had its makers tackled the “Jews rule the world” trope instead of barely alluding to it.

However, there is still a lot about Craig Gillespie’s film that feels fresh and disarmingly charming.