Something extraordinary happened at the height of the pandemic in America. A videogame store became the focus of Wall Street when its shares went through the roof, all generated by a mild-mannered blogger and YouTuber. Dumb Money is a story told most simplistically by the director of I, Tonya and a cast that does a beautiful job of underplaying. Think The Big Short but made so you can understand it.

Keith Gill, a watcher of stocks on the world market, decides against advice and buys stocks for a store, Game Stop. He shares the results online on YouTube and Reddit, advising his watchers to take his advice and buy the same supplies. As more and more people jump on board, the stocks grow, sending shockwaves through the analysis and hedge funders. As ordinary people put their savings into the shares, the hedge funders who own the company are losing money.

Craig Gillespie’s film tells the story like Adam McKay did with the mortgage scandal in The Big Short. He was explaining the events that had ordinary people, some with no clue about buying and selling shares, becoming rich just from following the advice of a man sitting in his rented home’s basement. Gillespie shows us the different worlds of those willing to sacrifice their hard-earned money for a gamble and how it affected the men who thought they were untouchable when it came to money.

This could have been a dull movie about the world of the stock market, yet this was such an extraordinary tale; Gillespie plays it as a slice of entertainment more than a lesson in making money, thanks to allowing us into the world of several people who benefited from the events, from college students to a nurse, to a man who works as a shop assistant in a GameStop store. At the same time, he shows us the hedge funder, Gabe Plotkin, a billionaire who wants to buy the mansion next to his house so he can knock it down to build a tennis court.

Keith Gill is the centre of this affair. His simple life, a wife and child, a brother who is a drop-out and a disappointment to his parents, finds that his life is turned upside-down once he has to decide when he hits 11 million dollars whether to sell up or hold. Using actual clips from social media, this becomes a thoroughly entertaining movie with a splattering of laughs and a sense of sticking it to the man, something that has been a long time coming.

The film has some terrific performers on board. Seth Rogan has moved away from the slacker comedies to much more serious roles and is ideally suited in his part of Plotkin. As Gill’s brother, Pete Davidson is precisely what you’d expect from Davidson, while Shailene Woodley nicely underplays her role as Gill’s concerned wife. Paul Dano, as Gill, is superb. He captures the part of the everyman extremely sound and never allows the part to become showy or unnatural. This is a man living an ordinary life who made a decision that changed his world and those who decided to follow.

Dumb Money, which is the phrase used by Wall Street for those who buy shares but don’t have a clue, is a real crowd-pleaser. It’s funny, insightful and an underdog tale that will have you grinning. Small-scale yet constantly enjoyable, it’s well worth checking out during this quiet period in cinema.

4 out of 5

Director: Craig Gillespie

Starring: Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Seth Rogan, Shailene Woodley, Vincent D’Orofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Myah’la, Talia Ryder

Written by: Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo and (based on the novel “The Antisocial Network”) Ben MezRich

Running Time: 105 mins

Cert: 15

Release Date: 22nd September 2023