What were you up to during the height of the covid pandemic? I had a bunch of operations — all necessary, unfortunately — and I continued working on my book, which I still haven’t finished writing. I also taught myself how to make a bunch of vegan dishes, not that I’m a vegan but who knows when I might change my opinion on eating meat. While many of us spent hours in our kitchens honing our cooking and baking skills, a group of small-time investors in the US were banding together around a beleaguered company. In doing so, they bankrupted a hedge fund and earned themselves a tidy sum along the way. Their story is told in the new movie, DUMB MONEY.

It’s June 2020 and the pandemic is raging. Financial analyst Keith Gill (Paul Dano, THE FABELMANS; THE BATMAN) is spending his spare time doling out free investing advice on his “Roaring Kitty” YouTube channel. He notices that a number of Wall Street hedge funds have heavily shorted GameStop, a brick-and-mortar video game retailer that had fallen on hard times due to customers shifting their shopping habits to online retailers. Gill believes that the stock is undervalued so he sinks his life’s savings into it. He also lets his legion of followers know and they quickly do the same. The word spreads and, before long, thousands of small investors who follow WallStreetBets on Reddit invest in GameStop too. The stock starts to rise and over the course of just two weeks in January 2021, the share price goes up a whopping 1500% making Gill a multimillionaire. Others, like nurse and single mom Jennifer Campbell (America Ferrera, BARBIE), GameStop clerk Marcos (Anthony Ramos, IN THE HEIGHTS; A STAR IS BORN), and university students Riri (Myha’la Herrold, PLAN B) and Harmony (Talia Ryder, WEST SIDE STORY), who invested less or came in after Gill, made hundreds of thousands of dollars. But while the share price was zooming up, hedge funds like Melvin Capital Management, along with its founder Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen, AN AMERICAN PICKLE, THE DISASTER ARTIST), who had bet on the GameStop stock to sink further, were losing billions each day.

There are obvious comparisons here to THE BIG SHORT from 2015 as writers Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo keep the jargon to a minimum and make the subject matter accessible to investors and non-investors alike. The big difference between the two films, though, is that this time around it’s the little guys like Gill and the others who are sticking it to the big, nasty hedge fund managers. It’s a true David-and-Goliath tale, which director Craig Gillespie (I, TONYA; TV’s PAM & TOMMY) plays up for all its scrappiness. What’s missing, however, is the wit that THE BIG SHORT has. Whereas that film is like a thick, juicy ribeye steak with side order of roasted russet potatoes, DUMB MONEY is a hamburger and fries. Not that those aren’t tasty too, but they’re not in the same league.

Dano is wonderful as the anti-establishment, everyday Joe of this tale and he is supported by a great cast that seems to have taken the story’s underdog message to heart. For me, the big surprise was Pete Davidson, who plays Gill’s slacker brother. I still don’t understand how this guy has a career in movies and TV but at least he shows here that he’s not completely without talent. In a bit of daring casting that works quite well, Rogen, Nick Offerman, (TV’s THE LAST OF US) and Vincent D’Onofrio, THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE, TV’s LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT) all play against type as the story’s smug “bad guys”.

DUMB MONEY is playing now in Hong Kong and elsewhere. It’s not going to win any awards but it sure is a lot of fun.

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