Review of Dumb Money, directed by Craig Gillespie

Back in January 2024, I had a travel journey from Malaysia that consisted of 40 hours. I was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Washington D.C. to come home after a three week endeavor in the country, and that meant I had a long layover in Abu Dhabi. And you bet during this time I watched a ton of movies.

I was flying through Etihad, and was pleasantly surprised at the selection of movies available on their entertainment system! I had never been on a Middle Eastern airline before, so I honestly had no idea what to expect. Seeing the kinds of Arab, Asian, and Bollywood movies available was so great.

That said, I did end up watching Dumb Money because I honestly got so bored at around hour nine of this flight. I still had another six hours to go and didn’t feel like sleeping anymore, so I just decided to start this movie. I refused to see it in theaters originally because it looked dumb in general, but now seemed like the perfect time.

Here’s my review!

One average worker leads a revolt in the stock market by pushing GameStop as a stock to watch.

Our main character in this movie is Keith, who works an average job and has a typical life as an American. He lives with his wife in Massachusetts, but he has a secret hobby: when he watches the baby or is home alone, he runs a YouTube channel called Roaring Kitty. Financially, things aren’t sound for him, and his brother, who works as a food delivery driver, roasts Keith for his hobby.

He often looks on Reddit and has formed opinions about the stock market and what the next big stock is, so on his YouTube live streams he shills out what he thinks is going to be the next big thing. When the COVID pandemic hits, Keith notices GameStop has fallen on the stock market, and he decides this is it. This is the next big thing.

So he spends everything he has on their stocks, and starts live streaming about it. During this time we cut to other individuals, like a nurse, a GameStop worker, a lesbian couple at university, and even Keith’s own brother to see the reactions and how other people are buying into this as well because of Keith. Again, he is mocked for this by his brother.

However, the big dogs in the hedge fund system are also mocking Keith and think it won’t impact them. They start selling stocks, which, in turn, boosts GameStop even more, making Keith a millionaire. Suddenly the common people have won at the stock market, and the hedge fund guys start losing a ton of money.

Keith suddenly now has clout when it comes to financial decisions, but things are about to get ugly. The subreddit on Reddit gets shut down, and everyone starts selling the GameStop stock, making its price go down. When Robinhood is unable to handle this mass selling, all sales of the stock are halted on the platform and the price is driven down.

The government then gets involved, because this is majorly shady. Keith is also investigated because there’s a claim he lied to the public to make himself rich, but he denies everything and says that he was trying to help the average person, as he himself was a part of that same ecosystem of being “average.”

We then learn that some of the hedge funds were impacted heavily, and Melvin Capital even shut down. Robinhood got sued, while some of the average Joes in the movie were able to become more comfortable with the GameStop money. Kevin sells some of his stocks to buy his brother a car, especially as his brother borrows his car to do deliveries.

Overall Thoughts

You know, there are some concepts and stories that wouldn’t make good movies, and I firmly believe this is one of them. There’s a solid undertone of stick it to the man and going against the grain of the elites in this film, but there isn’t enough tension to sustain interest.

I also wonder about making movies on recent events so soon after them—we kind of already are tired of the narrative to begin with, or at least I know I was. I didn’t want to see a movie, nor was it nostalgic in any way.

Like this is something I would enjoy reading about, but it doesn’t make good cinema for me. Taste is subjective though, so if someone loved this, kudos to you. Neither of us are wrong!

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.