Drop the “Money,” Just “Dumb.” It’s Cleaner

I saw this movie because I was bored, I have AMC A-List, and there aren’t any good movies out right now. I figured hey, I might as well go check out CityWalk in Los Angeles for the first time since I can walk there from my apartment. Well, I’m here to report the movie is not very good, and CityWalk is one of the most repulsive places on Earth, but I got out of my apartment for four hours and the sun was setting as I walked home, and I made my favorite pasta recipe for dinner when I got back, so ultimately I had a good time at the movies. But DUMB MONEY is not good, so let me tell you about the movie and why I don’t think it is good.

First, I’m gonna not talk about the movie some more. I live what many people would not consider walking distance to Universal CityWalk, but I love to be walking around to and from places, so for a guy like me it’s walkable. The entrance feels like you are entering a business park—not just a regular business park, but one with the vibe of an outrightly evil business from a movie called something terribly on the nose, like CRUEL CORP. There is no whimsy or charm (and no, the giant Minion peeking over a parking garage is neither whimsical nor charming, it is an astoundingly foreboding choice to perch a humongous Minion atop your theme park). I walked up the long hill and crested at the entrance of Universal Studios. The vibe up there is… bad. There’s a shitload of people who are just incredibly crappy at walking, and this is exacerbated by a poorly designed entrance system that herds the cattle either into the theme park or into the CityWalk in a very inefficient and mildly confusing manner. 

CityWalk seems scientifically engineered to repel its visitors. It is as if the Las Vegas Strip was condensed into a highly congested and claustrophobic hallway, stripped of any actual attractions or intrigue. The storefront marquees are gaudy and grotesque; many of the shop windows are just floor-to-ceiling LED screens blasting uninspired and unconvincing pitches to come inside. Hilarious brand tie-ins with names that sound like they’ve been spun through Google Translate like the “NBC Sports Grill & Brew” are crammed between usual suspects (Hot Topic and Abercrombie) and supposed one-of-ones (Zen Zone, a “wellness center” whose idea of zen is the vibe of the last remaining shop in a nearly abandoned mall).

By the time you trudge through all the mess you arrive at the AMC, which from the outside and inside is wasting away. The leather on the AMC Signature Recliners is peeling. The reclining mechanism is loud and slow. The previews are 25 minutes long. The trailer for Amazon Prime’s GEN V has characters say “fucked up” three times in a row but bleeps them out. I think a lot of people have to give their input on trailers before they are submitted to be screened in public, but I guess not all of them. Nobody claps for the Nicole Kidman monologue, at least. 

Now to the movie…

It is immediately clear DUMB MONEY does not have the sauce. Director Craig Gillespie either couldn’t figure out or didn’t even bother trying to solve the problem of making this story visually compelling. The entirety of the plot’s intrigue revolves around watching the line on a graph go up and down on a computer screen, which is obviously an issue if you want your movie to look good and be engaging. Gillespie seems wholly unconcerned with this. A majority of the film is spent watching its characters look at their phone or computer. It is not fun to get a behind the scenes look at someone Twitch streaming, and it is especially not fun to watch people watch that Twitch stream on their phone, but this isn’t even the worst visual sin that Gillespie commits. 

There is, of course, the challenge of incorporating r/WallStreetBets into this story. The subreddit was the engine that sent the GameStop stock price into the stratosphere, a truly unprecedented phenomenon that the movie seems largely uninterested in unpacking, choosing instead to glom onto Keith Gill as a messianic figure. Gill’s allure is not fleshed-out beyond him posting his investment portfolio spreadsheet on Reddit and wearing a red headband and epic cat shirts. He has a catchphrase too, I suppose. 

Alright, how’s this: Paul Draino—he’s doing raps with Bladee and Ecco2k 

The movie’s adulation for Reddit and particularly r/WallStreetBets was honestly kind of shocking. Gillespie uses the same nauseating social media slideshow that DON’T LOOK UP used to depict something going viral, but this time it’s Reddit shitposts blasting onto the screen alongside a cacophony of TikToks. It’s as if you asked the world’s most rudimentary AI program to make an Adam Curtis film—genuinely unpleasant to watch. And even stranger, in this movie that bills itself as a comedy, the Reddit posts are played up for laughs more than any actual character’s dialogue, save for Pete Davidson, who is the only person in this film acting like he is genuinely in a comedy. At my screening, the biggest laughs came when .gifs of Reddit/4chan parlance like “HODL,” “retrads” and “gay bears” flashed on screen. 

The tone is so confused from start to finish; Gillespie can’t figure out if he’s doing THE BIG SHORT, MONEYBALL, or THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Based on the trailer, it seemed like they were going for a funnier version of the third, to the point where I was surprised they didn’t bill it as part of the Zuckerberg Cinematic Universe. But there is just nothing there under the surface of DUMB MONEY. The movie does not understand why any of this happened and does not know what any of it really means. Had they gone for a BURN AFTER READING angle, they could’ve used this to their advantage, but the somewhat serious post-text tries to wrap it up with a bog standard “where are they now?” that mostly leaves you scratching your head as to why this even got made. 

I remember when it was announced that the rights to a book proposal had been bought while the GameStop saga was still unfolding in January 2021. It seemed to me that the concern of the studio was simply being first rather than actually having a compelling story in mind and that’s what ended up happening. I don’t think it’s fair to say that this movie came out too soon—with a few year’s distance the ramifications of this story would’ve been clearer, which would’ve obviously made it easier to piece together an actually coherent movie, but mostly I think it was just the wrong people driving the car. A more talented filmmaker would not have leaned so heavily on Reddit posts, Twitch streams, and TikToks and perhaps could’ve made something genuinely compelling. It’s also possible that this should’ve just been a documentary! Maybe not everything has to be a big studio movie! But the kid sitting in front of me wearing a wall of Oakleys on his face laughed sometimes and the crowd at CityWalk had kind of died down as I exited the theater. So maybe things aren’t so bad.