‘Dumb Money’ and the Glories of Having 15 Minutes of Fame During the Pandemic

The story of Wall Street Bets is that of an internet forum reviving a struggling video game retailer by betting against the market and humiliating its ruling minority of hedge fund billionaires. The story played out in the midst of the Covid pandemic, when a financial analyst named Keith Gill posted mischievously on Reddit about the value of Gamestop — the brick-and-mortar video game store that, like many legacy businesses, had fallen on hard times — and predicted that its value would increase. He also spread the word on YouTube and Twitter under the nom de plume of “Roaring Kitty.” It worked.As the momentum behind Gamestop grew, more and more ordinary investors — even first-time investors — rushed in. Each had their own motivations. College students invested to mitigate the weight of their student loans. Retail employees and nurses were drawn into Mr. Gill’s manic charisma, desperately wanting to escape life’s mundanities while they isolated on their phones. Whether investing in a dying business like Gamestop was a good idea in the first place seemed to get lost in the frenzy. Instead, what would come to be known as the “meme stock craze” sought to deliver huge returns to ordinary investors and, at the same time, stick it to the elite hedge funds that were betting against Gamestop’s success. The idea that these Wall Street “Masters of the Universe” could be brought down by Redditors in their basements delighted the meme stock enthusiasts as the craze spread to other deeply troubled, legacy companies. Big names that got dragged into the frenzy included Bed Bath & Beyond, the AMC theater chain, and Blackberry.Soon, people across the political spectrum were cheering on the meme stock mavens, delighted to see the little guy finally get a win. Unlikely bedfellows, such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the radio host Dave Portnoy, glowingly praised Wall Street Bets. And now there’s a feature-length movie. “Dumb Money,” directed by Craig Gillespie, is based on the book “The Antisocial Network,” by Ben Mezrich. The film has a lot in common with “The Social Network,” which was also based on one of Mr. Mezrich’s books, “The Accidental Billionaires.” What a lot of commentators tend to miss when they talk about populist movements is that they can be less about ideology than about a set of contradictory moods. Mr. Gill (Paul Dano) has an energy and unpredictability that disrupts the conformity of Wall Street elites such as Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) and Ken Griffin (Nick Offerman). In “Dumb Money,” Mr. Gill’s role is one part guru and, in other respects, a troll. For someone like Marcos (Anthony Ramos), who works as a clerk for Gamestop, he’s an agent of chaos that makes him feel he can be financially free if he takes his advice to buy the stock. Of course, it’s not all roses and blossoms for Mr. Gill’s adherents, such as a single mother and nurse played by America Ferrera who ill-advisedly bets big in an effort to escape from her nine-to-five job and takes a vacation that is far out of her league. Meanwhile, Mr. Gillepsie makes it easy for us to hate the founder of Melvin Capital, Mr. Plotkin (Seth Rogen), as well as the chief executives of the Robinhood app that made much of the trading frenzy possible — and then cracked down to prevent further squeezes. As is often the case with these kinds of movies, “Dumb Money” reduces these wealthy figures to their most incompetent versions possible. While Mr Rogen hardly looks like Gabe Plotkin — a real-life Master of the Universe who had to shut down his hedge fund when it came under assault from the meme stock Redditors — he does get his layer of patheticness just right enough for everybody to dislike him.If this narrative of rich vs. poor seems half-baked, then there’s another thematic layer to “Dumb Money” that is far more compelling: the backdrop of the pandemic. Some of the meme stock fanatics are “essential workers” struggling to keep up with the erroneous norms of the pandemic. The story of Wall Street Bets took place before the advent of the Covid vaccine, and much of it plays out behind surgical masks. “Dumb Money” is not about Mr. Gill or the hedge fund boys but about people trying to find faith in a crisis. Nevertheless, “Dumb Money” is a fun celebration of the absurd glee that many often associate with the internet. Mr. Gillepsie, who directed “I, Tonya” and “Cruella,” is known for throwing many soundtrack drops, where rappers Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion are liberally included to highlight a possible class conflict. The film is also a decent depiction of how one can fall down the rabbit hole of an incredibly risky market. In real life, the meme stock craze saw many gullible investors lose their fortunes to foolish trades, and, in the end, the Wall Street elites came out on top. Yet despite these ordinary investors’ losses, “Dumb Money” shows how people can finally believe in a system that always ignored them just by blindly jumping in. Maybe that’s worth the distraction.

‘Dumb Money’ and the Glories of Having 15 Minutes of Fame During the Pandemic

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