Dumb Money Review

Craig Gillespie makes the events legible and moves fast, and the film's best asset is Paul Dano, who plays Keith Gill as a sincere, slightly awkward man who believed his own thesis and never stopped being surprised that anyone listened. The scenes in his basement with a headband and a webcam are the most convincing thing in the picture. Pete Davidson is funny, Shailene Woodley is warm, and the hedge fund side gets its due, with Rogen playing a manager discovering that the house can lose.

The complaints are structural and consistent. The film follows the template The Big Short established, needle drops and montage and ordinary people cut in as chapter markers, and the retail investor characters exist as demographic slots rather than people, so their subplots stall the momentum every time the film returns to them. The mechanics of the short squeeze are explained too quickly to land. Several reviewers note that the movie declares a victory the real story does not support and stops before the consequences arrive. Entertaining, righteous and considerably shallower than its subject.