In 2020 an amateur YouTuber who went by the name of Roaring Kitty presented a thesis for why he liked GameStop stock. By 2021 GameStop stock was headline news and Roaring Kitty, otherwise known as Keith Gill (Paul Dano) was requested to give evidence at a congressional hearing. 

The true story of the GameStop short squeeze that happened in 2021 is a hugely entertaining bedfellow to The Big Short. Explaining complicated financial terminology in layman’s terms whilst having a lot of fun is no mean feat. 

The plot gives us two groups of people to route for and against and as it introduces them lets us know their net worth which ranges from the billions to the negative thousands. In the banking world we have hedge fund managers and app billionaire’s portrayed by Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, Vincent D’Onofrio and Sebastian Stan. Whilst in the working class everyday world we have a couple of students, a nurse and a GameStop employee portrayed by America Ferrara, Myha’la Herrold, Anthony Ramos and Talia Ryder. And if this juxtaposition of the rich versus the poor is not enough we get to see how the pandemic impacted these groups of people differently as that is when the real life events happened. Whilst one billionaire argues with his realtor over the fact he wants to buy and demolish his neighbour’s home so he can build a tennis court a GameStop employee is being berated for not pushing the sell of premium games. It is also one of the best portrayals of the pandemic I have seen on film as it captures the mood wonderfully. 

The key to the films success though is Paul Dano and arguably the real Roaring Kitty. If you check out the YouTube videos you will see that Dano’s version of Kitty is superb and both the fictional representation and the YouTube persona seem like thoroughly likeable people. Add to that a hilarious mess of a brother played by Pete Davidson, a loving and supportive wife played by Shailene Woodley and a couple of down to earth working class parents portrayed by Clancy Brown and Kate Burton and you also have an almost too good to be true caring family unit. 

Director Craig Gillespie has form with larger than life biopics and finding the humour within them after I, Tonya and the tv series Pam & Tommy. Dumb Money cements this hot streak and you will love learning what the title means along with phrases like “hodl” and “diamond hands”.