An outstanding cast overcomes a tendency by the filmmakers to try too hard in wrestling with arcane financial maneouvering in “Dumb Money,” a sort of “Big Short Lite” about the Gamestop stock manipulation war of a couple of years back.

Director Craig Gillespie (“I, Tonya” and TV’s “Physical”) uses a colorful cast of often loathsome characters and a lot of sass, profanity and lowdown-and-dirty hip-hop to give this Davids vs. Goliaths take the feel of a generational rebellion. What he botches is setting this fight up, giving his hero the background that made investors trust him and properly explaining the machinations, methodology and market meaning of instigating a “short squeeze.”

It’s a movie with the speed and funny fury of “The Big Short,” but that demands we root against this or that figure simply because he’s a “type” being played by Vincent D’Onofrio, Seth Rogen and Nick Offerman. And the script relies on a flurry of acronyms, profane tirades and web-nerd slang of the “stonk” variety to bluff its way past its shortcomings and seem hip.

“Dumb Money” is about the hilarious recent tug of war over fading video game retailer GameStop, villains who have bet a fortune on its stock market collapse, and a plucky band of nerds, coeds, and working class Gen Zers who decide to follow a youtube stock-tipper over a cliff to try and stop them.

Paul Dano plays Keith Gill, married (Shailene Woodley), with a new baby and a steady job at Mass Mutual in some sort of financial analysis gig. But by night, he dons his samurai headscarf and kitten-covered t-shirt, sits at his computer, shows off his (underwhelming) financials and as Roaring Kitty, passes on stock tips and investment advice via his vlog and connection to Reddit’sWallStreetBets feed.

Reddit is an anarchic safe space for the politically-incorrect and ulfiltered name-callers, with WallStreeBets having something of a “Burn it Down” credo (not really gotten into here) in the face of cynical, conservative corporate America’s assault on the middle class and the gamesmanship they’ve used to destroy the American Dream for everybody under 40.

Keith? He’s just a guy who looks at all the “short” bets on GameStop by assorted big hedge funds, and via a combination of nostalgia for the company and obviously stupid over-exposure by those betting it will fail, draws his own conclusion.

“I like the stock.”

Next thing he and we know, a generation dabbling in the market via small-time “retail” investor platform Robinhood goes full tsunami/all-in on GameStop. As the stock soars, COVID-stressed nurse Jenny (America Ferrara), Texas coeds Harmony (Talia Ryder) and Riri (Myha’la Herrold), dying mall GameStop store employee Marcus (Anthony Ramos) and Keith himself make a killing.

“Holy s–t!” they exclaim in glee.

Those hedge fund managers betting GameStop is going extinct, sneering fat-cats like Steve Cohen (D’Onofrio), who keeps a pet boar in his mansion, Gabe Plotkin (Rogen), who has bought a neighbor’s house just to knock it down so he can build a tennis court and play during the pandemic, and the richest of them all, the inscrutable, unflappable Ken Griffin (Offerman) find themselves exclaiming “Oh s—!” And not in glee.

Gillespie and the screenwriters set up the stakes for Keith with his trusting wife and confidante, and let the doubts be underlined by his can’t-hold-a-real-job brother. Every word out of this jerk Kevin’s mouth is filthy, funny, and dead wrong.

“This ass—e thinks he’s Jimmy Buffett!” You don’t have to be smarter than brother Kevin to know that he means “Warren Buffett.” But you have to give the devil his due here. This mouthy dope of a loser was tailor-made for Pete Davidson, and he’s hilarious in the part.

As the “movement” gains momentum and the insiders stop cracking jokes about the “dumb money” getting thrown around by “retail” investors, who “always lose,” the “system” and those who know how to game it fights back.

I like the way Gillespie uses his younger players — Dano, Ferrara, Ryder and Davidson, et al — and their taste in music to show a generational fault line in this battle. We hear snippets of the filthiest hip hop available — Cardi B singing “WAP,” works made famous by Darko and Kay Ro$e — to set the tone on “furious” and “foul-mouthed” in depicting young, Internet-empowered, Reddit-organized outsiders seeking “revenge” on the economy-manipulating, business-destroying “ass—–s” who’ve done so much to limit their futures, and who are the first to squeal like stuck pigs when student loan forgiveness is mentioned.

The film suffers from a surfeit of sinister figures, including the real life jawboning jokers of financial TV and those “rob from the rich, broker for the poor” “heroes,” the guys who founded Robinhood. Sebastian Stan plays co-founder Vlad Tenev as so cowardly and dishonest even Elon Musk is dismayed by him. Dane DeHaan plays the clueless Gamestop Store manager still following the company Bible in hopes he can make the store/chain profitable, if only Marcus would do the same.

There’s so much going on around these people (we never meet the main cheerleaders of WallStreetBets) in this time (COVID is a backdrop trying to move to the foreground) that “Dumb Money” never seems to develop the flow that would really put it over.

It’s an amusing but choppy affair, with Congressional hearings, sibling rivalry, bad guys winning and good guys fighting the good fight, often to their own detriment.

Portaying a figure beloved enough to inspire “If he’s in, I’m in” financial followers without a backstory explaining that loyalty (it isn’t just Trump Cult seniors who are “gullible” these days) is a big burden to lay on Dano. But his open-faced earnestness encourages us to let that slide.

The movie doesn’t make us smarter or more wary about “the system,” or set up false prophets the way “The Big Short” did. Let’s face it. There are aspects of that film’s point of view that aren’t aging well.

But for a Quixotic, quick turn-around comic thriller about stock market winners, losers and supervillains, “Dumb Money” isn’t half bad.

Rating: R, profanity and lots of it.

Cast: Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Shailene Woodley, Pete Davidson, America Ferrara, Olivia Thirlby, Talia Ryder, Anthony Ramos, Myha’la Herrold, Sebastian Stan, Dane DeHaan, Nick Offerman and Vincent D’Onofrio

Credits: Directed by Craig Gillespie, scripted by Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum, based on a book by Ben Mezrich. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:45