Dumb Money
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: September 15, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
36
Mixed:
14
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Original-CinJim SlotekSep 18, 2023
If it’s not exactly a documentary, Dumb Money offers up enjoyably anarchic glee as the little guy wins for a minute. Read full review
85
TheWrapSep 9, 2023
Gillespie’s snappy direction and Kirk Baxter’s nimble editing capture the chaotic and irreverent online culture without necessarily disrupting or distracting from the main stories. Read full review
84
Paste MagazineTara Bennett Sep 18, 2023
What Dumb Money does very well is show that the GameStop stock story is more than just a meme for our times, but a first stone in the pond with a ripple effect that’s still a work in progress. Read full review
83
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 10, 2023
Somehow, Gillespie manages not only to make it feel fresh but its own distinct chapter in this never-ending story. Read full review
83
IndieWireNatalia WinkelmanSep 8, 2023
This energetic, enjoyable movie does not set out to break ground, but in putting centerstage those who are typically left on the sidelines, the movie emerges as a rousing success. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 22, 2023
For all its undeniable pleasures, Dumb Money, derived from Ben Mezrich’s book The Antisocial Network, feels just a little shallow. Read full review
80
ABC NewsPeter TraversSep 22, 2023
Paul Dano excels in this fact-based tale of how little-guy investors actually took down billionaire Wall Street fat cats. What’s not to like about this slapstick tragedy with a windfall of laughs. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 21, 2023
Dumb Money isn’t a documentary, and it’s not a go-to guide for beginning investors. It’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be something a little less weighty and a lot more fun than that, and it succeeds. Read full review
80
Time OutHelen O'HaraSep 20, 2023
Rather than a simple story of underdogs vs The Man, director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) has made a complicated, sometimes funny story that is not a comedy, and sometimes feels like a horror. Read full review
80
EmpireJohn NugentSep 19, 2023
With a brisk, biting comic tone and a nice line in righteous anger, Dumb Money skilfully picks up The Big Short’s baton for cinematic-economic takedowns. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleSep 15, 2023
In its thumbnail sketches simmering with risk, humor, and melancholy, illuminating a world of worsening disparities but spikier solidarity, it entertainingly takes stock. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 9, 2023
[A] smart, light-fingered, brashly entertaining finance-world docudrama. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramSep 8, 2023
Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) tells this pandemic-era David-and-Goliath story energetically. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 26, 2023
For a Quixotic, quick turn-around comic thriller about stock market winners, losers and supervillains, Dumb Money isn’t half bad. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 22, 2023
An engagingly lighthearted rags-to-riches romp with a David vs. Goliath element, the movie uses its real-life basis to formulate a modern day fairy tale. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 22, 2023
If there’s anything rarer than a film about money that truly makes us think, it’s a film about politics that makes us feel like there’s something to it beyond money, and luck. Read full review
75
CNNBrian LowrySep 22, 2023
Dumb Money might lose a little nuance and complexity in corralling all its facets into movie form, but boiled down to what will please an audience (in theaters, or more likely later at home), the smart money says most people won’t care. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSep 20, 2023
Dumb Money is a tale of 2020, and the movie captures that 2020 feeling — gray, depressed, anxious and almost comically miserable. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubManuel BetancourtSep 20, 2023
Smart, playful, and perhaps efficient to a fault (there’s only so many times a rap song can be used as a narrative stitch to take us from one character to another), Gillespie’s latest is an enraging David vs. Goliath, ripped-from-the-headlines tale that deserves to be seen to be believed. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesDominic BaezSep 20, 2023
We may know how this strange saga ends, but Dumb Money will make you feel something, too. Whether that’s jubilation for the Davids or rage at the Goliaths, well, isn’t that kind of the point? Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittSep 19, 2023
In its own terms, Dumb Money probably should sell off sooner – nothing kills storytelling momentum like congressional Zoom hearings – but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better big-screen combo of rising stock prices and rousing joy. Read full review
75
The Associated PressMark KennedySep 19, 2023
The populist message here is clear — the longer Wall Street overlooks the value of people, the financial system will remain broken. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 14, 2023
The movie plays out like a thrift-store version of Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” in that it takes us through the looking glass into a world so complex and nebulous, even the major players sometimes seem utterly befuddled — but does so as if we’re taking a thrill ride in a Financial Theme Park. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 10, 2023
It’s a relatively concise, no-nonsense, short (100 minutes) comedy that reminds us that even when we think we’re playing the game, the opponent has a different rulebook. Read full review
75
ColliderRoss BonaimeSep 8, 2023
In this David vs. Goliath battle, the film gives hope that change on a large scale could be possible and does this in a charming, entertaining narrative with a great cast from top to bottom. Read full review
70
The AtlanticDavid SimsSep 22, 2023
It’s a diverting, high-energy romp, packed with a charming ensemble and armed with an unsubtle disdain for the one percent. Read full review
70
Screen RantPatrice WitherspoonSep 11, 2023
Dumb Money is a crowd-pleasing story with great performances and a script that keeps it simple. Read full review
70
IGNKatie RifeSep 11, 2023
A quick, funny victory lap for anti-establishment Redditors and stonk enthusiasts. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 11, 2023
Gillespie and his movie-star cast aren’t trying to short squeeze the topic for statuettes. They’re just laying out what happened, why it happened, and why it mattered in the most audience-friendly manner imaginable, then take the whole thing to the moon. And it’s the lack of pandering in the way that they do it while also drawing clear battle lines that make it a surprisingly safe bet. We like the stock here. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 10, 2023
An unusual underdog saga about an ordinary investor who inspired a grassroots movement that scared Wall Street’s major hedge funds, Dumb Money is a snappy, entertaining picture that taps into a lingering resentment about how rigged the financial markets feel to many Americans. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 10, 2023
Dumb Money is a sturdy entry into the developing canon of docufiction that seeks to be lively and lucid and informative about the rotten state of the American dream. It’s often as crassly effective as Roaring Kitty and his cohort were in those wild months two years ago, when greed was good for the many instead of the few. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreSep 9, 2023
The pleasant surprise of Dumb Money is that it’s such an effective entertainment, even if it oversells the revolutionary impact of what it’s depicting. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckSep 8, 2023
It’s a compelling story told in largely engaging fashion, anchored by Dano’s terrific turn as the eccentric, strong-willed Gill, who becomes an unlikely folk hero. Read full review
69
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 21, 2023
Like the stock market itself, there are peaks and valleys. Read full review
67
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonSep 14, 2023
As a primer for one of the funniest, most emotionally satisfying thumbs in the eye to the super-rich in recent memory, Dumb Money is a pretty good time. That said, it leaves out crucial details and has little time to dig deeper into its cast of characters, making it feel like a cardboard glimpse into a complicated blip in the rigged game of American finance. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanSep 12, 2023
As a feel-good fact-based fable of financial comeuppance, Dumb Money is funny enough. But as its name suggests, it isn’t especially smart. Unlike its protagonists, it isn’t interested in making a quick buck, just an easy laugh. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 25, 2023
Ultimately, Dumb Money may not be as revealing about the financial markets as it is about the rallying power of the internet. Read full review
60
Little White LiesHannah StrongSep 20, 2023
A documentary might have offered more of an insight into the uniquely masculine form of psychopathy that prospers on Wall Street and Reddit alike. Read full review
60
ScreenCrushMatt SingerSep 14, 2023
It’s not boring and there are a few decent laughs. But it also does feel like exactly the movie you would expect a big Hollywood studio to make from this material. Read full review
60
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergSep 14, 2023
An energetic, ingratiating dramatization of the GameStop stock craze of 2021. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodySep 12, 2023
Dumb Money, touching on questions of the authority of personality and the importance of nonfinancial—even completely irrational—motives in the investment world, offers a gleeful romp through strange and treacherous territory that merits a closer, more careful look. Read full review
60
BBCCaryn JamesSep 10, 2023
It is funny, irreverent and crowd-pleasing, with a kaleidoscope of likeable characters and actors. Director Craig Gillespie (Cruella and I, Tonya) has turned a saga that ended up before a Congressional finance committee into a breezy entertainment. Read full review
60
SlashfilmBarry LevittSep 9, 2023
For a story as surprising and unpredictable as the true GameStop story was, it's frustrating to see Dumb Money follow such a familiar structure. What it does do especially well is its exploration of the community aspect of the situation. Read full review
60
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 9, 2023
It’s perilously close to being overstuffed (one more introduction would have tipped it over the edge) but a controlled and nimble script justifies the large ensemble, using each thread to quickly switch back and forth between the anger, ecstasy, disbelief and fear that seeped from conference to dorm room at the time. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleAlejandra MartinezSep 20, 2023
Maybe Dumb Money’s storytelling would have been bolstered by having some bite instead of being all memes and bark. Read full review
50
PolygonRafael MotamayorSep 14, 2023
Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money is neither dumb enough to capture the bonkers nature of the story nor smart enough to turn it into an entertaining or even informative tale. Read full review
50
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 8, 2023
Ripped from yesterday’s headlines, it’s as fast, flashy and superficial as the director’s prior efforts, and also as exaggerated. Read full review
40
Film ThreatAlan NgOct 3, 2023
There’s just no nuance here. Good is good. Evil is evil. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 22, 2023
In trying to pretend a blip was a seismic revolution, the film winds up distinctly strained, and more depressing than it quite knows. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithSep 22, 2023
There’s a more interesting, less strident film under the surface, but it never manages to get out. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonSep 21, 2023
Gillespie and his editor Kirk Baxter cycle through scenes of these one-dimensional characters, headache-inducing montages of cable news footage, YouTube re-creations, and TikTok videos. The pacing is frenetic, but the content is mind-numbingly dull. Read full review
38
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 11, 2023
Dumb Money, with a predictable script by Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo and Ben Mezrich, rambles on and on with an unwaveringly lethargic tone and zero buildup of energy or anticipation. All the while, the audience has little investment in this dud about investing. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineMark HansonSep 8, 2023
The film’s status as a corporate entertainment product (among the film’s producers is the Winklevoss twins) also presents an internal discord in and of itself, particularly with the script incessantly preaching financial equality for all. Read full review
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