Film Review - Dumb Money (2023)

Dumb Money is the new film by Craig Gillespie who made I, Tonya and Cruella and stars Paul Dano as Keith Gill, a Youtuber who decides to invest in GameStop in 2020 during the Dark Times of the COVID shutdown as he feels it is a stock that investors want to see fail so they can cash in, sensing a chance to get one back for the little guy many others jump in.

Dumb Money is quite a good little film and first off big kudos has to be given to the cast, Dano has been hit and miss for me in movies but he hits here this time, Shailene Woodley is okay as his wife Caroline but doesn’t get an awful lot to do, Pete Davidson is fun as Keith’s brother while Dane DeHaan is a lot of fun as Brad the owner of a local GameStop who does his whole performance in a facemask.

But the standout here is America Ferrara and between this and Barbie she is having a great year, she plays a local nurse named Jennifer and you really get behind her as someone who is an essential worker and just wants something back for herself given she is putting her life on the line every day during those Dark Times.

Special mention must also be given to the films editing by Kirk Baxter who is one of David Fincher’s editors and he does an excellent job here with the various website grabs, videos from that time and footage shot for the film and make it all look frenetic and seamless and it gave good life to this story.

And lastly I liked how this movie really depicted the dark times of 2020 and early 2021 as this desolate time where people were stuck indoors and life was shut down and how some people lost someone they cared about to those events, its probably the best depiction of those days I’ve seen in a movie so far.

And so that was Dumb Money and at the moment it stands at #6 on my favourite films of the year so far list, its good fun while telling a good story with good performances, 3 and a half out of 5.