Hedgelords.

Dumb Money — 3/5

I feel like this movie is successful in spite of itself. By the end, you feel the spirit of Keith Gill as a folk hero, by brain and balls just doing something interesting until suddenly it becomes doing his best—ultimately doing it for the people, doing it because it's the closest he'll ever get to saying something aloud and having people listen. I think it's the only kind of revolution that could realistically happen these days, driven by a "fuck it, why not"—and driven by "making money" as our banner to fight beneath—that somehow morphs into a genuine desire to beat them at their game. In getting there, I think the movie doesn't really explain the GameStop saga very well, nor truly tap into frustrations of the working class dumb moneys who partook. So in that I feel like it's made for people who already had a decent idea of what was happening. "You got mad then, now get mad again." And that ladders up to the movie not having the power that it could. Half of me expected a Big Short-esque 'explain it to me like I'm five' approach, and I walk away thinking it should have still cribbed from that movie. Fuck it, why not. Explain it. Help us understand what the fuck was going on here. Instead, it feels like an advertising case study, cribbing from news reports and social media to paint a portrait of the time and "the big powerful idea at the center and, hey, look at all these KPIs." You get the energy of it, but you don't totally feel the weight of it. The splash becomes ripples becomes the seemingly calm sea as all those awful, deserved feelings boil below. And it's not the first time. By the end, as with "The Big Short," the energy of anger just dissipates because we've got nowhere to direct it.