A Meme-Ified Look At The State Of Wall Road [SXSW 2023]

The very best factor Timoner does with the documentary is utilizing the identical language that drives its story: memes. From continuously reducing to clips from “Wolf of Wall Road” whereas photos of rocketships, apes, and diamonds fill the display, to TikToks, and extra. This makes for a fairly entertaining documentary that does handle to elucidate a fairly advanced matter — the inventory market — in layman’s phrases, with out the necessity for Margot Robbie in a bath. 

At its greatest, the movie paperwork the 2021 GameStop inventory squeeze, through which on-line retail merchants efficiently drove the inventory worth of the favored recreation retailer to extend almost 30 instances, and induced hedge funds to lose an unimaginable amount of cash. The movie explains the way it occurred, why, and in addition illustrates how a lot of a joke that “motion” actually was, utilizing their very own meme language to show it.

The issue is that Timoner would not actually do a lot with the documentary. Positive, she has loads of interview footage with the likes of Anthony Scaramucci, Jordan Belfort, and extra, and she or he does draw a connection between the GameStop stonks and the January sixth tried coup, however would not do a lot to point out why these could be related past simply saying the web can carry folks collectively.

Likewise, the movie makes an attempt to color the rise of crypto and NFTs as some type of revolutionary act of defiance in opposition to the monetary system, a platform for good that democratizes issues and stays open when banks aren’t obtainable, however fails to interrogate their impact on the surroundings or their fraudulent elements.

That is an entertaining movie a few well timed matter, however one that’s simply as insightful because the memes that gas the story.

/Movie Ranking: 6 out of 10