GameStop lives, and is probably open late at a location near you. The fate of the often troubled videogame retailer is at the core of Dumb Money, a fast-paced and funny movie about the 2021 amateur stock trading craze on which the retail chain’s fortunes rose, fell, and then rose again. And if the filmmakers neglect to cap their tale with news of the store’s unexpected survival (the chain just posted a quarterly profit), well, the GameStop saga was never really about the store, was it?
Keith Gill (Paul Dano), a 32-year-old Massachusetts financial broker must have been a loyal customer because in the fall of 2019, he began singing the praises of GameStop in online videos recorded in his basement. To the astonishment of the few people paying attention to his initial posts, Gill reported buying 53 grand in stock, an idea that struck most as laughable. Everyone knew the hedge fund guys (“smart money”) were going to cash out big when GameStop crashed and burned. That’s how the world works, a truth Gill and his followers (“dumb money”) were destined to upend.
Gill calls himself Roaring Kitty on YouTube and DeepFuckingValue (DFV) on the subreddit thread, WallStreetBets, which is where he really takes off. His videos, recorded while wearing cat T-shirts and a red bandanna, catch on during lockdown. Soon, all manner of first time investors are using trading platforms such as RobinHood to invest their hard earned dollars just like their new hero, Roaring Kitty, who wins their confidence by posting spreadsheets of his entire stock portfolio. “If he is in, we are in.”
Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) and first-time screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, aided by ace editor Kirk Baxter (The Social Network), shift rapidly between connected story fronts: Keith at home, with his wife (Shailene Woodley) and baby and
the two-house estate of the initially derisive but gradually panicked hedge fund king, Gabe Plotkin (Seth…
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