Dumb Money

My nephew has been looking forward to Dumb Money for weeks so we went to see it last night.  He absolutely loved it and, even though I had only the vaguest notion of what was happening at any given time, I had a lot of fun with it, too!  Financial analyst Keith Gill (Paul Dano) uses all of his savings to buy a large block of stock in the company GameStop because he thinks that it is undervalued, much to the dismay of his exasperated wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley), and promotes it on his YouTube channel as "Roaring Kitty" and on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets.  Soon lots of ordinary people, including Jennifer (America Ferrera), Marcos (Anthony Ramos), Riri (Myha'la Herrold), and Harmony (Talia Ryder), are buying the stock on the Robinhood app, developed by Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan) and Baiju Bhatt (Rushi Kota), on his recommendation which drives up the price.  This causes several Wall Street hedge fund CEOs, such as Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogan), Steve Cohen (Vincent D'Onofrio), and Kenneth C. Griffin (Nick Offerman), to panic because they have been short-selling the stock and they need it to fail.  I really enjoyed how funny and self-aware this movie is (it reminded me of The Big Short but it is less heavy-handed) and the juxtaposition between the ordinary lives of the average investor and the extravagant and over the top lifestyles enjoyed by the hedge fund CEOs is incredibly amusing (I especially loved all of the employees standing at attention when they play tennis at a resort).  Dano is perfect as the nerdy Keith (I think he excels in these everyman type roles) and I loved Pete Davidson as his slacker brother Kevin who wants him to sell when the price of the stock starts climbing (although I do think there are too many unnecessary secondary characters to keep track of).  I wish there had been more information provided about specific terms that are used frequently (what are diamond hands?) but I have to admit that the comments on YouTube and Reddit that are shown in lieu of explanations are hilarious and my lack of understanding didn't really detract from my enjoyment.  My nephew highly recommends this (but I think you can wait until it streams).