My Review of "Dumb Money"

Dumb Money is a movie about true events that happened in January of 2021. It's kind of crazy because this movie came out in 2023. Movies like this don't really come out this fast but it's nice to have the story fresh in our heads for us to see what came out of it. I'm sure everyone has heard of the GameStop fiasco on the stock market back in 2021, well this is basically about it.

It all starts out with a guy named Keith Gill. He has a job as a mutual fund advisor so he's studied up on the stock market to get the job. In his off time he makes YouTube content to talk about stocks. It's a little passion project. At the time Keith and his family have gone through some tough times.

In his tough times he does something dramatically controversial. Keith decides to put all of his savings into the GameStop stock. At the time it was a company that was about to die out. It probably still considered a company that is about to die out as no one is buying games at stores anymore. Things are going all digital with online stores selling key codes. There really is no reason for a GameStop.

Keith obviously didn't see it this way. He saw that a lot of big investor companies were shorting this company. Basically shorting a company means you're placing your bets that the company will go belly up and when it does they cash in.

All this is happening during the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic. So everyone is doing this virtually and have more time to invest into building online communities. Downtrodden by a family tragedy and struggling to make ends meet Keith decides to put his money where his mouth was. He tells everyone on his social media sites that he believes in GameStop and they should too.

Surprisingly, Keith gets some traction and people start buying into this stock. The price of the stock goes up and this means that the big investors that were shorting the company would lose money. This becomes a bit of a trend and pretty soon GameStop prices skyrocket all while billionaires lose billions of dollars.

This soon becomes an underdog story of a small community of stock buyers fighting against big investment companies. There is some dirty stuff that the big investors try to do to avert their losses. This all goes to the federal government and all hell pretty much breaks loose.

I never thought I'd be so intrigued by such a storyline. Those that liked the movie Big Short might be familiar with this type of movie but I felt this movie was much more focused. I liked how it focused on a few members of the small community and showed their struggle. To see people with no money still holding their money on this stock to fight the power is pretty emotional. They could have cashed in and helped themselves but they knew that there was a bigger picture to all of this.

The pacing of the movie was surprisingly well done, it keeps you on your toes at all times and doesn't feel like there's any real fluff. It doesn't hurt that the cast is absolutely amazing. They kept me emotionally invested in all of their side stories.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I didn't think I would be so interested in something that seemed to be so dry. There was a lot of intrigue and anticipation while watching this and I found myself getting caught up with everything. After the movie I felt like I wanted to know more and see if some of these movements were still going on. I have to give this movie a 7.5 out of 10. It is definitely a recommend.