DUMB MONEY TBC

The name of the Game…

★★★★✩ OUT 22 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS

Its title being a mildly derogatory term concerning individual investors, Dumb Money is a true-life comedy-drama in the mould of The Big Short or The Wolf of Wall Street. Only now the subject is what happens when the day traders fight back.

The story unfolds in 2020, with internet stock prophet Keith Gill (Paul Dano) – aka Roaring Kitty – putting his savings into GameStop, a videogame retailer haemorrhaging money. Gill believes Wall Street has undervalued the company. His followers on Reddit invest small amounts, among them a Pittsburgh nurse (America Ferrera) and a GameStop employee (Anthony Ramos). And as more pile in, the stock escalates, threatening billionaire hedge funder Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) and others, who had bet on the company’s failure.

Adapting Ben Mezrich’s book The Antisocial Network, director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) tells this pandemic-era David-and-Goliath story energetically. There are things to dislike – Pete Davidson as Keith’s brother – but the good far outweighs the bad. An excellent Dano is supported by a dreamy ensemble, including Shailene Woodley, Sebastian Stan, Nick Offerman and Vincent D’Onofrio. In another killer turn post-Barbie, Ferrera is the heart of the film as an essential worker who refuses to buckle. A film about belief, it’s also a morality tale, as some – though not all – of the 1% get their comeuppance.

THE VERDICT More drama than comedy, this lightning-fast Wall Street takedown tale is worth investing in.

Invest a bit more, Keith, and you can afford the rest of your trousers

BLUE BEETLE 12A

★★★✩✩ OUT NOW CINEMAS

Indie helmer Angel Manuel Soto’s nimble Latino superhero movie sends a breath of fresh air and exuberance through DC’s corridors. Xolo Maridueña plays graduate-turned-pool cleaner Jaime Reyes, who stumbles on an ancient piece of alien biotech that turns him into a flying bug symbiote. Meanwhile, Susan Sarandon’s villain wants to create an army of ultra-soldiers with the scarab. The film resembles a curtain-raiser for bigger instalments but comes into its own as Jaime’s family join the action, delivering a playful entry in a genre often subsumed by numbing bombast.

THE CANTERVILLE GHOST PG

★★✩✩✩ OUT 22 SEPTEMBER CINEMAS

Despite a starry UK voice cast (Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie both feature), this shrill, wellintentioned animated adap of Oscar Wilde’s comic ghost story is more yawn-raising than spine-chilling. Presented in flat, stylised visuals, it suffers from a bland TV look, which combines with the verbose script to give a dated feel. Fry’s perky performance as the Elizabethan ghost hell-bent on expelling an American family from his stately home can’t salvage a drawn-out slapstick story dotted with ‘wacky’ interludes.

ANCHORAGE 15

★★★✩✩ OUT NOW CINEMAS, CURZON HOME CINEMA

Driving from Florida to Alaska with a trunk full of stolen pills, screw-up brothers Jacob (director Scott Monahan) and John (writer/ producer Dakota Loesch) get unsurprisingly high on their own supply – and plenty more besides – as they journey through an opioid-ruined America. But what begins as one hell of a (road) trip gradually becomes repetitive, as the two bitch and fight beneath the big lysergic blue skies. Loesch is fantastic, and the film has its own demented rhythm, but ultimately, like Jacob and John, it ends up with nowhere to go.

MEG 2: THE TRENCH 12A

★★✩✩✩ OUT NOW CINEMAS

Jason Statham and that great big shark return in this listless and mechanical sequel, this time joined by more toothsome monsters. Missing, alas, is the predecessor’s goofy spirit of fun. As Statham’s ‘green James Bond’ plunges to the ocean floor again, director Ben Wheatley somewhat disappointingly serves up a generic platter of set-pieces that feel grimly filleted of jeopardy and tension. Splitting the action between Chinese star Jing Wu and the Stath results in a disjointed affair, while a joke about Jaws 2 inspires nostalgia for a time when blatant cash-ins had a touch more class.