Dumb Money - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Dumb Money



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
Being that it’s only 2 years ago, I’m sure many of you still remember back in early 2021 when Gamestop became THE biggest company in the world for a short period of time. Reddit users and a social media investor flipped the market on its ear by short squeezing the under valued Game Stop and ended up exposing cracks in the armor of the gigantic machine known as Walmart, and effectively killing the fledgling day trading app known as Robin Hood in one fell swoop. Based off of Ben Mezrich’s book “The Antisocial Network”, Dumb Money dramatizes the rise and fall of one of the biggest laymen run stock market upsets in history.

Much of what happened behind the scenes of the Gamestop kerfluffle will never be known due to the fact that the SEC and several other government agencies basically opted to hide behind the old Epstein plea of “we didn’t see anything!” when it investigated what happened, as well as the mind BEHIND the meteoric short squeeze has effectively vanished from social media and opted to live a life of anonymity, leaving the rest of us wondering just what REALLY happened. However, the film does a good job of dramatizing the highlights of the movement, despite what we don’t know.

What basically happened (and what happens in the film) is a down and out investor going under the social media moniker “Roaring Kitty” realized that the hedge fund firms and big traders were ignoring game stop, effectively under valuing it and leaving an opportunity for retail investors and day traders to come in and buy up the stock for pennies on the dollar. Posting on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, Roaring Kitty (now known as Keith Gill, played by Paul Dano) started posting his ideas about buying the stock, inspiring a entire section of social media to just massively dump their life savings into the stock, pumping it up to historic margins and racking in money by the day. To make matters even more fun, they weren’t just buying and selling to get some extra money, they were buying and selling to pump the value of the stock, effectively holding out for the long run and causing several hedge fund firms to lose excess BILLIONS in the long haul.

However, this was not to last forever, as the Hedge fund managers (played by Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman and Vincent D’Onofrio) pressured the day trading app Robin Hood to shut down the sales of Game Stop stock, and killed the value of the stock overnight. Naturally this sort of collusion was something that even Congress and the SEC had to investigate and look into, only for them to be faced with mountains of evidence of collusion and subsequently decide that “there’s nothing to see here.

There’s a lot to unpack with the real story of what happened during early 2021, and the movie itself is not going to encapsulate it all in an hour and 45 minutes. It tries to portray the entire event as a massive grassroots movement with every elite hedge fun manager twirling their mustaches while they controlled the stock market (even though they lost billions initially). The reality is, the entire event was massively complicated, with some elements definitely showing the upper crust having undue influence, and the flip side being that the short squeeze never really had any hope of going long term. But I still highly recommend checking out the real story articles and books that have been written on the subject, as it is a FASCINATING read.

However, there is one thing that the movie really did get right. Not to sound like a “eat the rich!” type of character, but the Game Stop even really shone a light on the inner workings of the stock market, and just how perilous the entire thing is. A group of basically moms, dads and reddit autists quite LITERALLY took several companies to their knees because they were ignoring a part of the market that they thought was just “stupid money” for the unwashed masses to fight over in hopes of gaining a few pennies. Several hedge funds were destroyed by this incident, and it also pretty much confirmed what a lot of people already suspect. The game itself may not be 100% rigged, but there is definite skullduggery behind the scenes. The SEC’s refusal to prosecute ANYONE even though the evidence was overwhelming, as well as the metered bail outs put a really bad light on anyone connected to Wall Street. Add that in to to the obvious collusion with the Robin Hood app, and it is quite understandable why the average person feels that the stock market is rigged against them. Everything isn’t as black and white as “rich people bad, everyone else is screwed”, but much like Epstein dying in his cell while under suicide watch, the average person can see that not everything is on the up and up. And in that respect the movie did a fine job in bringing that particular emotion to the surface.




Rating:

Rated R for pervasive language, sexual material, and drug use




Video:

The digitally shot film looks rather good, with strong colors, stable contrast and a very solid black level balance. My only complaint with the film is that it has a sort of dusty, gauzy sort of haze to the entire thing that isn’t always visually appealing. Fine details are generally really good, but that gauziness gives things a sort of misty look that isn’t as razor sharp as other films using the same camera system. Nothing looks BAD per se, just not amazing despite the stable and neutral look to the image.









Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is rather engaging despite being a very heavily forward leaning track. The film has a majority of the work in the dialog (center of the room) with the modern day rap/R&B flavore music adding a lot of the surround and low end presence. It’s solid and does the job without any major issues, but neither is it going to be jaw dropping and amazing at the same time. Vocals are crisp and clean in the center of the room, while the music fills everything else out

point of contention though. Nothing to do with the quality of the audio at all, but using Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion type music for pretty much all of the score drove me NUTS. If you ever want to torture yourself, listen to the score on repeat, as I think “WAP” is about as effective as waterboarding a victim in terms of pure psychological torture. Almost made me want to give the score another ½ star off just out of pettiness, but I digress.












Extras:

• Fat Cats vs. The Roaring Kitty
• Diamond Hand Ensemble
• Join the Cast & Discover the Insane True Story!
• Deleted Scenes
• Filmmaker Commentary

Final Score:
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As a whole, Dumb Money is a moderately fun movie. It’s kind of a throw away financial comedy/thriller, and while it has some rather decent acting, I don’t think it will stand the test of time as great flick. I enjoyed it as a solid entry point to the whole Game Stop fiasco, but personally I find that the multitude of articles and books on the subject over the last 2.5 years has been much more revealing than a movie comedy flick will ever get. As such, this is going to be a rental in my opinion.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Paul Dano, Dane Dehaan, Pete Davidson, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, Seth Rogen
Directed by: Craig Gillespie
Written by: Ben Mezrich
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French DD 5.1
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Sony Pictures
Rated: R
Runtime: 105 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: December 12th, 2023

Recommendation: Decent Watch

 

[Asere]

I have never heard of this one before. Certified Fresh? Idk I think RT gets it wrong with many movies. Thanks for the review.

 

[Epoxy1]

Michael, it's funny because I posted my review this morning and we share many of the same thoughts on the film. The Big Short is one of my favorite "business" movies of all times because it's entertaining and educational. While this one was entertaining, it wasn't nearly as educational as it could have been (by comparison). Also, I agree 100000% on the musical choices for the film and I felt it degraded the film by including them. It took a serious subject and lowered the IQ of everyone listening (watching) by at least 20 points by having that trash accompanying the film. I gave the film 3.5 stars myself.

Great work!

 

[Michael Scott]

Michael, it's funny because I posted my review this morning and we share many of the same thoughts on the film. The Big Short is one of my favorite "business" movies of all times because it's entertaining and educational. While this one was entertaining, it wasn't nearly as educational as it could have been (by comparison). Also, I agree 100000% on the musical choices for the film and I felt it degraded the film by including them. It took a serious subject and lowered the IQ of everyone listening (watching) by at least 20 points by having that trash accompanying the film. I gave the film 3.5 stars myself.

Great work!

yeah, the use of the music really took me out of the film. was really puzzling