Dumb Money

Dumb Money is relatively restrained for such a wild story, but it’s an engrossing one all the same.

I could barely keep my eyes open during this unfunny snoozer packaged as a wannabe heir to Adam McKay’s 2015 film “The Big Short.”

It is a movie of such fun performances from every single one of the characters. Everybody is just giving it their all.

A fun and fast-paced comedy about a populist financial uprising.

It’s deeply sympathetic towards these people, who are only trying to claw their way out of a trap. It also leaves its own breadcrumb trail of warnings that suggest the community they’ve invested in may not be their salvation.

Sounds dry and simplistic, but the script from Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo is vivid and visceral, and somehow brings the stultifying grimness of that central pandemic time block back to painful life.

Dumb Money gets into the underdogs who gamed the system, and it’s hard not to tap into the mood.

There's something about this story — maybe it's too simplistic, maybe it's the fact that the actual events are so recent that the film can't comment meaningfully on their potential future implications — that makes its populist bent feel contrived.

Craig Gillespie’s film guarantees unbridled fun with its uncompromising re-telling of how a cat-tee-clad Redditor/YouTuber and his loyal followers caused a never-seen-before revolution in Wall Street.

Beyond being a work that serves as a testimonial about this enigmatic case, the film is at most fun and not much more. [Full review in Spanish]