The insta-doc Rise of the Players embraces the heroes of the GameStop stock story

polygon.com:

The new GameStop documentary Rise of the Players is a coda movie. You know the type — the kind of story that’s largely an oral history, with a feel-good climax that comes in a few lines of text, over a montage of smiles and laughter, right at the end of the film. It becomes clear that Rise of the Players is going in that direction about halfway through, after it has introduced nine ordinary people who aren’t just the good guys of this story, they’re the best kinds of subjects a documentarian could want.

These nine are the “OG Diamond Hands” who first invested in the beleaguered game retailer one year ago, then rode those holdings through a white-knuckle market anomaly that shot the share price damn near to Neptune. The obvious viewer question is “How did these folks make out once the GameStop story stopped being national news?”

The eventual coda that answers that question is well worth the 90 minutes director Jonah Tulis spends introducing and explaining Rise of the Players’ round-hearted stars. Among them is Justin Dopierala, a dairyland money manager who makes millionaires out of nurses and welders. Rigoberto Alcaraz, whose parents immigrated from Mexico to Batavia, Illinois, comes through with a Horatio Alger story for the ages. And Jenn Kruza’s indestructible smile is validated after she holds onto her GameStop shares long enough to make a huge profit, even while she’s navigating chemotherapy treatment with no health insurance.

The documentary’s final lines unabashedly call these nine investors “heroes,” which is a bold label for a group whose struggle consists of making a whole lot of money. But the title fits. One year after the GameStop short squeeze, which involved Reddit bros, dank memes, hedge-fund