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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE CREATOR OF SUCCESSION POPULATES MOUNTAINHEAD WITH MORE HILARIOUS,
MONSTROUS RICH GUYS  
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Tim Grierson
May 23, 2025
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_ Jesse Armstrong continues being one of the best at making ice-cold
comedy from an "eat the rich" mindset. _

, Photo: HBO

 

When _Succession_
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in the summer of 2018, viewers instantly ate up its delicious servings
of the feuding, scheming Roy family. But even among fans, there was
one area of debate: Sure, the Roys were horrible people, but was their
monstrousness also incredibly funny? In other words, was the show a
chilling drama or a cutting dark comedy? Audiences may ask the same
question—albeit, in reverse—after watching _Mountainhead_, the
feature-length HBO film written and directed by _Succession _creator
Jesse Armstrong.

A wry smackdown of four insanely rich bros hanging out at a gaudy
estate in the Utah mountains, the movie generates a decent amount of
laughs, but it’s best when Armstrong puts satire aside for rage,
seething at the tech kingpins destroying our society to increase their
profits. If _Succession _was a bitingly hilarious
drama, _Mountainhead _is an ostensible comedy in which the laughs
get caught in your throat.

Armstrong has assembled a strong quartet of actors, none of whom goes
for the joke. Jason Schwartzman plays Hugo, who has invited his pals
to Mountainhead, his utterly massive, totally ridiculous pad. (Before
you ask: Yes, the estate’s name is a riff on the Ayn Rand book _The
Fountainhead_. Tech bros are nothing if not the most obvious and
witless of creatures.) Hugo wants to ensure that this weekend summit
of “the Brewsters” will go off without a hitch, and Schwartzman
brings a delightful little-brother insecurity to his performance. He
has good reason to: Hugo has the lowest net worth of the
foursome—”only” $521 million—and feels inadequate because
he’s the one guy in the group not technically a billionaire. But he
hopes to change that with an app that’s caught his eye, called
Slowzo, which is one of those buzzy/ill-defined wellness promoters. It
looks as phony as Hugo’s impossibly bleached-white teeth.

The film introduces the rest of the crew as they arrive. Steve
Carell’s Randall is the oldest, his silver-fox handsomeness
perfectly complemented by his wise-sage condescension. He’s been
making millions since the other guys were in diapers, although he
feels surpassed by the preening Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the
richest Brewster at $220 billion, who runs the popular social-media
platform Traam. Then there’s Jeff (Ramy Youssef), an AI whiz who
recently had some friction with Venis after spouting off about him on
a podcast. There’s still tension between them when they first see
each other, but Venis is the sort of dude who will suggest, without
irony, that they “hug it out.” With these four, apparently, it’s
bros before world domination.

On _Succession_, Armstrong (who also co-wrote the films _In The
Loop_ [[link removed]] and _Four
Lions_ [[link removed]]) viciously
skewered male competitiveness
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fact that men, after eons of evolution and enlightenment, still engage
in petty rituals of one-upmanship to assert their
dominance. _Mountainhead_‘s guys would have fit in well on that
show, and the writer-director deserves continued kudos for not just
mocking tech and media but, just as importantly, actually
understanding how those spheres operate. As Hugo and his buddies catch
up with one another, they speak in insider tech/financial lingo full
of frightening phrases like “post-human.” They’re always on
their phones or watching cable news, all of which communicates a
constant clatter of sound bites about nations in crisis, economies in
turmoil, and uprisings occurring in distant lands. Venis’
social-media platform is responsible for sowing misinformation that is
exacerbating these anxieties, but he’s full of cocky self-denial,
convinced he can’t be blamed. To the Brewsters, it’s all just a
game, merely a question of how it balloons their bottomless fortunes.

Audiences won’t watch _Mountainhead_ and easily be able to spot
which real-life billionaire is represented by each fictional
character. Traam may be this movie’s version of Twitter, but Venis
is no Elon Musk. (Likewise, none of these guys is Jeff Bezos or David
Zaslav.) And yet, viewers will know these men—that combination of
arrogant, nerdy, and aloof that has come to personify the plutocrats
who walk amongst us. Not that Armstrong allows the Brewsters to be
simplistic types; he infuses Jeff with a sarcastic sense of humor and
the faintest whiff of a moral compass, and Randall with a slight
melancholy from perceiving that he’s a lion in winter around these
young Turks. (Carell’s especially good when Randall discovers that
the U.S. president wants to talk to Venis but not him. Even among the
Brewsters, it hurts when you’re excluded from the cool club.)

_Mountainhead_‘s background buzz of potential global catastrophes
eventually filters its way into the plot, which involves the Brewsters
not seeing eye to eye on the best way to tackle these escalating
societal emergencies. (It’s a testament to Armstrong’s perfectly
hermetically-sealed universe that when these guys assume that
they’re the ones who will determine what the planet should do, we
believe them.) There are devious twists that shouldn’t be spoiled,
but the narrative’s ultimate destination underlines Armstrong’s
larger point about the callousness of our billionaire overlords—how
everything, even human lives, is just a pragmatic business decision. 

The twists might be shockingly funny, but the writer-director and his
cast don’t lean into that tone. Instead, there’s only an icy
indifference that illustrates how far removed these bros are from the
world, which they only see through the beautiful windows of
Mountainhead: silent, snowy mountains in the distance—perfection on
Earth, as long as you’re rich enough to afford the view.

To be sure, _Mountainhead_ isn’t breaking new ground. This is
currently a golden age of anti-upper-class cinema and television
thanks to _Parasite_
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Out_
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of course, _Succession_. Watching four wealthy assholes trade quips
is hardly revelatory. But although Armstrong is drawing on past
strengths, he knows the milieu well enough, and his anger isn’t
losing its potency. If the film has an MVP, it’s probably Smith, who
transforms Venis—what a wonderfully stupid name—into a
one-percenter bully with an aggressively punchable face. Forget Donald
Trump, forget Stephen Miller, forget Kristi Noem: This is the worst,
most powerful villain in our midst. Sure, Venis is fictional, but his
real-world equivalents are everywhere. And Armstrong makes sure we
know there’s nothing funny about them. 

DIRECTOR: Jesse Armstrong
WRITER: Jesse Armstrong
STARRING: Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy
Youssef 
RELEASE DATE: May 31, 2025 (HBO, HBO Max)

* mountainhead
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* HBO
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* concentration of wealth
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* tech bros
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* plutocracy
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