Dumb Money

Dumb Money is based on the true story of how a co-ordinated investment strategy of 1000’s of small investors ended up costing hedge funds billions of dollars. Based on Ben Mezrich’s book and directed by Craig Gillespie, Paul Dano plays Keith Gill. Gill is an amateur investor and internet influencer. When he spots an investment opportunity, in the undervalued GameStop, he shares this with his followers. As investor numbers grow this catches the attention of powerful Wall Street figures especially Steve Gibson (Vincent D’Onofrio), Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman) and Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) whose firm, is taking an investment gamble in GameStop’s failure, a gamble that Gill’s influence threatens and starts a battle between Wall Street Goliath’s and the small investor David’s.

I am usually a fan of this kind of story. I often find them fascinating, engaging and astounding in how one side gets away with flagrant abuse of its position. But while Dumb Money has all of the ingredients, I was left disappointed in what felt a rather flat and souless bit of storytelling.

The problem is possibly the story itself, while interesting it feels, at least in Gillespie’s telling, that it lacks any truly engaging characters to cheer for or rail against. The main protagonists seem to go about their business, with never any feel of peril to emotionally engage you. Gill is driving the investment, but it never seems to weigh on him or excite him. Plotkin, whose investment company is the one impacted, never seems to bothered by the billions he is losing. And the small investors represented by the characters of America Ferrara, Anthony Ramos, Talia Ryder and others, could all be taking high stakes risks, but it is never clear whether the are so ultimately I found it hard to care about any of them.

Dumb Money, while based on a fascinating story, is a strangely flat telling of it. It doesn’t really engage, lacks characters to care about, or present any jeopardy. This probably makes a great documentary, but not sure it makes a great film.