In its illustrious past, Hollywood has turned financial turmoil in the news into fictionalized and often sensationalized film stories. Whichever side of the economic or political spectrum your laurels rest upon, some of those stories have been good (Wall Street, The Big Short, Margin Call) while others have struggled to lift off the ground (All the Money in the World). Fitting squarely in the middle of the long and short positions of its brethren is Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money.

Based on the novel The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich, screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo tell the story of Keith Gill (Paul Dano), alias “Roaring Kitty,” on YouTube and Twitter. “Roaring Kitty,” the private investor based in Massachusetts, was the catalyst for a meteoric rise in GameStop’s stock price in early 2021, driving a wedge between the retail investors pushing the price up and the exposed brokerages without enough cash to cover the shorted positions.

Dano doubles down on his meekness as an actor. As Gill, he aims to keep a low profile. A runner, a family man, and a prankster, the actor shines in this role, portraying him as someone who just wanted to get information into the world. He didn’t expect the world to latch on to him and the rollercoaster of a ride it would take him on.

However, as other readers of his articles on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets began to take heed of his advice, and his videos on YouTube attracted new viewers, such as Jennifer Campbell (America Ferrera), Marcus (Anthony Ramos), Riri (Myha’la Herrold) and Harmony (Talia Ryder), the audience began to understand Roaring Kitty’s analysis. As the script emphatically states, Roaring Kitty “did not solicit anyone to buy or sell the stock for [his] own profit.”

However, none of them were prepared for the turbulence their buys would cause in the markets; the retail investors ran the gamut from somewhat comfortable in their financial positions to debt-saddled college students who thought what was happening was cool and borrowed money to take advantage of it. None were victims, except for the five minutes of stunned reactions when “Roaring Kitty” was temporarily blocked from Reddit while they were barred from buying more shares. Gillespie focuses on these five minutes as if Medusa’s head was cut off and there wasn’t another one growing in its place right away. And that aspect of the story rattles if you understand its implications. It was, seemingly, one of the best and most annoying moments of the film and reflects the times we live in with a lot of shock and awe mixed in. The comedy and drama play shock and awe to the story’s credit.

The story paints the supporting cast of retail investors and family members with a cross-section of bright, bleary-eyed individuals who really didn’t know what they were getting themselves into mixed with an I don’t care attitude; “If I have a chance to stick it to the Man, I’m going to take the risk.”

This is true. The story never paints Roaring Kitty as pushing his readers and viewers to buy the stock; he’s in as much shock as his followers. So is his homely wife, Caroline (Shailene Woolley). Pete Davidson, Kate Burton, and Clancy Brown, who played Keith’s brother, mom, and dad, respectively round out the resounding voices of reason. Dumb Money does have one “stop and think about the true power of the internet and its influence on uncontained information out in the wild” moment, based on one bit of continued analysis; the script only focuses on Gill’s involvement in the entire event, so the story doesn’t contain the whole net effect of this financial event.

On the other side of the proverbial coin are the brokers and hedge fund managers who held the shorted positions, indicating that GameStop was on the brink of collapse owing to its struggling sales. Steve Cohen (Vincent D’Onofrio), Melvin Capital CEO Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen), Citadel Financial CEO Kenneth C. Griffin (Nick Offerman), and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Stan) and Baiju Bhatt (Rushi Kota) star as the villains of Wall Street, except, they’re really not villains, only portrayed as villainous.

Cohen’s and Plotkin’s smug, flippant nature would rub anyone wrong. The playfulness between the two characters comes across as more than a man crush in the making that the story alludes to but doesn’t fully invest in. Offerman’s Griffin plays stoicism to the hilt, making money available to Cohen and Plotkin as if he was dabbing the corner of his mouth with the corner of a fine linen napkin. Robinhood is the key villain in the film as Tenev tries to keep Bhatt’s mouth shut during an interview on how the company generates revenue while potentially conspiring to keep traders at bay when they realize they don’t have enough capital to cover the transactions as GameStop’s stock blows up from the volatility; their horrifying reactions are hilarious and terrifying.

The difficulty with Dumb Money is that it paints the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ who become ‘haves’ with both sides of the coin being so smug, either out of not knowing what they were doing or knowing what they were doing and playing with fire; the event becomes circuitous and ultimately redundant. Dumb Money serves as a time capsule, not of the actual event nor of the subsequent accusations of collusion between Citadel and Robinhood, but how the story ends as quickly as it started, with lives returning to what they were.

The long and short positions behind the turbulent rise of GameStop’s stock along with AMC at the time (the theater chain, not the cable network; let’s get that right) were enough to rattle Congress to take action for fear that the volatility could cause similar tremors as happened with the housing bubble. The smugness combined with the “this is cool” attitude distills the events to the characters involved, rendering the story moot.

‘Dumb Money’ is a financial term coined by Wall Street investment bankers who think “that retail investors are not smart enough to understand the stock market and the perception that they always lose.” The idea behind the 2021 run on GameStop was that one retail investor was right; the rest were along for the ride. Dumb Money parleys their positions into a troubling situation that could have affected everyone negatively. It doesn’t represent the ultimate negative impacts, rolling off the screen with little more than a whimper for the everyday American.