Usually January is a long dull month. But lately, it’s become of the most eventful months of the year. In 2021, the Jan. 6 insurrection coup attempt happened. Then for the next two weeks leading up to the inauguration of President Joe Biden, there was military service members sleeping in hallways and garages in the event something bad happened. At the same time, the whole GameStop stock market scandal was brewing.
This movie feels like it was directed by the “Extreme!” skateboarders from Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. But no, it’s directed by Craig Gillespie, the director of the Fright Night remake, Cruella and I, Tonya. All are great movies. But apparently, he seemed to be channeling Danny Boyle high on adderall and Red Bull. This movie is all over the place with visuals and graphics almost being drowned out by loud-ass rap music. It feels like some stuck-up middle-aged fart trying to make a movie of what he thinks Gen Zers and Millennials are.
The problem is that just because they used a lot of memes and videos on Reddit’s u/WallStreetBets doesn’t mean they have to use it in a movie. The movie is based on a book called The Antisocial Network. And over a decade ago, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin made The Social Network which didn’t resort to the same “In Your Face” feel of this movie.
I fail to see how anyone going into this will determine exactly what happened. Mostly because it keeps shifting from one person to the next. And with the exception of one scene of Nick Offerman as Citadel LLC owner Ken Griffin and Seth Rogen as Gabe Plotkin, of Melvin Capital Management, playing tennis, no one ever appears on scene at one time. There’s too many characters to keep track of nor do we really care about them. Also, Offerman and Rogen are poorly cast as their real-life counterparts which gives this whole movie the feeling that it’s a SNL parody.
And this movie is the type that really should be taken seriously. Even Paul Dano who has risen as a seriously revered actor over the last 20-25 years, feels out of touch as Keith Gill, a financial analyst who was making videos about stocks and investment under the name Roaring Kitty. And Shailene Woodley has the thankless role of his wife, Caroline. I’ve never been a big fan of either actor but I’m surprised they didn’t have Woodley doing the stereotypical wife calling on the phone scene.
It’s obvious that most of the actor’s scenes were probably filmed in about a week or two time frame at time. So, all you have is people talking on the phone or looking at their phones or watching TV. Vincent D’Onofrio appears in a glorified cameo as hedge fund manager Steve Cohen. But it doesn’t matter who all these people are, because the filmmakers didn’t. We switch back and forth to some outrageously stereotyped lesbian couple in college, Harmony Ryder (Talia Ryder) and Riri (Myha’la Harrold), to some GameStop employee Marcos Barcia (Anthony Ramos), who’s unsatisfied in his job but has invested in stocks. And then there’s America Ferrera as Jenny, a registered nurse who’s in debt and really the only one we feel any connection with thanks to Ferrera’s performance as a single parent heavily in debt.
What’s worse is that no one bothers to explain what was going on with the stock market and selling short. Gillespie throws in actual news archives and even Stephen Colbert explaining it. You could basically check it up on Wikipedia. The title comes from a term that Wall Street investors and bankers use for people who they think aren’t qualified or sophisticated enough to handle the market and can make mistake that the rich can exploit.
Because the Covid-19 pandemic had people staying away from crowded places like shopping centers and malls where most GameStop stores were, their sales were down, which meant the stock prices went down. “Normal” people could invest and since the prices were so low, at the encouragement of Gill. This cause many of them to have a bigger portfolio and on paper Gill became a multi-millionaire. But there was a problem. The hedge funds and the day-trade company Robinhood led by Vlad Tenev (Sebastian Shaw) didn’t have the money. So, they reportedly all colluded with each other.
People couldn’t buy stock on Robinhood and the subreddit u/WallStreetBets was temporarily shut down. The big boys were losing money. And this cased many of the regular people to lose a huge chunk of their portfolios. I find it a little hard to believe that Gill didn’t think what he was doing as a financial analyst could be viewed as insider trading. This may be why he’s portrayed more sympathetically as he is grieving the death of his sister who died from Covid. The Netflix series Eat the Rich was more objective and Gill declined to be interviewed or comment on that. Maybe it was because he wanted to be viewed in a more positive light.
And the one thing they make Gill more likeable is by giving him the most obnoxious brother, Kevin played horribly by Pete Davidson, who serves absolutely no function whatsoever in this movie. Every time, Davidson is on screen, I got a headache. You will need to take some type of headache relief from his bad acting to the outrageously loud music to the banal way Wolf of Wall Street feel this movie has.
There’s a great story here and I really wish we could’ve seen more of the Jenny character. But I didn’t believe Harmony and Riri were really a believable couple. The Marcos character could’ve also been enhanced. Instead, we get Offerman playing Ron Swanson as a rich businessman stereotype and Rogen playing his character only to show how ignorant he was because he couldn’t turn mute off a Zoom call.
I feel we haven’t heard the last of the GameStop stock saga. I wouldn’t doubt if a limited series is in the works on a streaming service. But the overall message here is an old one, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. There’s a reason the casinos don’t want people to win too much money. A better story could’ve been told than from what is presented here.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 