The premise for Mountainhead (now streaming on HBO Max) is like a joke setup: Four noxiously rich tech bros hole up in a lodge for a weekend while the world burns, in part because of their actions; hijinks ensue? It’s a pitch-black comedy from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, who, perhaps unsurprisingly, further explores the moral decay of rich and powerful Americans, here played by very funny guys Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwarzman and Cory Michael Smith. Seems like an inspired collection of talent coming together to drop an avalanche of neo-tech, fatally online lingo on us. The question is, can we dig ourselves out of the rubble?
The Gist: I’m not sure what these four guys really “do,” and that vagueness may be intentional. It’s clear that Venis (Smith) owns a social media platform called Traam that just launched some AI features that are promptly obliterating objective reality and causing significant global instability. His post when the features go live? “Fuuck,” it reads, and he doesn’t care that there’s an extra “u,” and a toadie wonders if he needs a third one. He’s worth a couple hundred billion. Venis – it’s pronounced “Venice,” but, I mean, look at how it’s spelled – is on-again/off-again pals with Jeff (Youssef), who recently said mean things about Venis on a podcast, which, for tech bros, is horrible, just horrible. But this weekend exists in part so they can “hug it out.” Jeff developed an AI tool that’ll filter the fake stuff from Traam, and his net worth doubles, turning the odometer over to 12 figures on the first day of their little vacay. Jeff’s thingy might quell the riots and assassinations and toppling governments wrought by Traam’s bad-apple users, but for some reason he won’t flip the switch and, you know, help the world. Venis wants to buy Jeff’s thingy possibly so he can own everything within grabbing distance, and Jeff resists because men like this are unconscionably competitive assholes.
Their mentor of sorts is Randall (Carell), a relatively old-school investment guy, I think. He’s worth 12ish figures, but all his money can’t buy him more time – he’s been fighting cancer. Is it terminal? Not sure, and that might be moot if what’s happening with the rest of the world continues at this clip. The host for this weekend is Hugo (Schwarzman), who the other three call Soup Kitchen – Souper for short – because he’s only worth a bit more than a half billion. Which is still plenty enough to afford this 21,000 sq.-ft. Utah “getaway” with a bowling alley and a droolworthy view of snow-capped mountains, which might possibly be the only slice of Earth that isn’t about to burst into flames. The place, which Hugo dubs Mountainhead, is ultramodern, ripe to be ripped by his buds: “Was your interior decorator Ayn Bland?” Venis snips with as much affection as he apparently can muster toward any living thing, which, obviously, ain’t much.
Normally, these four guys would be surrounded by what I’m tempted to call “yes men,” but that term is limiting in its sexism, and “yes people” isn’t quite accurate enough, so “yes shitheads” they’ll be. But this weekend, they’re unadorned, just the four of them, being bros, having some drinks, playing poker, riding snowmobiles, passive-aggressively comparing personal and professional statistics, tracking their stock values and staring at their phones, watching apocalyptic videos from real life all over the world. Thankfully, Venis is here to pretend to know which of them is fake, and proclaim them as such (“Heads don’t explode like that”). Hugo wrestles with the inadequacy he feels for not having earned a billion dollars yet, and keeps going on about launching a “lifestyle super app.” Randall wonders if the four of them can figure out how to upload human consciousness – perhaps that of a dying man? Anyone around here fit that description? – to the internet before the world goes kablooey. Venis just acts like the richest man in the world, because he is, and yes, that’s as insufferably putrid as you’d think. And Jeff, well, he’s just as far gone as everyone else, but once in a while, he says something within light years of being reasonable, specifically about the need to put a leash on Venis and Traam, and, well, that just won’t do if chaos is going to continue to reign.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Trace Armstrong’s screenplay work past Succession to 2009’s political satire In the Loop and its lashing, funny dialogue; that film was directed by one of this era’s great satirists, Armando Ianucci, who also helmed The Death of Stalin and created HBO’s Veep, among many other acclaimed films and series.
Performance Worth Watching: At the moment, Smith is having, well, a moment. He enjoyed a bit of a breakthrough in May December, and recently was the highlight of Saturday Night, playing Chevy Chase, which strikes me as a dry run of sorts for his Mountainhead character, who’s a giant-ego asshair who hits you like a gob of toothpaste hidden beneath a pepperoni on your pizza.
Memorable Dialogue: Two doozies:
Randall’s assessment of Earth: “It’s a solid starter planet.”
Venis’ ideology: “Nothing means anything, and everything’s funny! And cool!”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Gotta say, watching these four asinine human beings glance at a Risk game board and offhandedly begin divvying up the world amongst themselves is as hilarious as it is chilling. Mountainhead toes the line between farce and plausibility with surgical precision, writer/director Armstrong effectively bullseyeing the soft spot in our global anxiety. Should we laugh, cry or rage rage at the dying of the light? I ask, even if there’s no good answer.
Whether Armstrong’s intent is to agitate, observe or criticize is the question. Perhaps all of it, perhaps none. He reportedly accelerated production on the movie so it could be relevant and timely, and it succeeds. He also nails the casting, finding four exquisite deadpanners to fling around terms like “placeholdered” (that’s a verb) and “decelerationism” while they drink bright purple, orange and green smoothies and casually, flippantly consider themselves the focal point of the world, its unofficial rulers. To them, existence is a game of capitalist one-upsmanship, and people with less money than them are their chessboard pawns. It’s not that difficult a premise to swallow, sadly.
And one of these guys has more money than anyone else on the planet. He created the chaos. Another can promptly erect guardrails. That’s the “plot” of Mountainhead, such as it is. Armstrong stages it as a chamber-piece hangout movie, and if you think these characters are easy to despise in concept, imagine how you’ll feel after you hang out with them for two hours. Good thing they make us laugh so frequently, assuming cynical, tar-black comedy is palatable to you. Hugo worries that the temporary lack of water emerging from his faucet has something to do with the mayor of Paris being assassinated. Venis sees the current situation as being an opportunity to “do one big upgrade on the whole world.” Randall can’t see anything outside the lens of his own mortality, as if the world just won’t be the same without him. And Jeff is considerably more wiggly, occasionally reasonable but quite possibly, and rather quietly, the most insanely narcissistic of the bunch.
The challenge here is simply being able to hang with these guys and their rapid-fire dialogue barrage, decoding their tech-bro slang on the fly. It’s a big ask for some of us plebes; be grateful for the rewind button as jokes dogpile on references, all of it fatally, you know, online. Draw rough parallels with the Musks and Zuckerbergs and Thiels of the world if you want, or pray that men like this choke on their own drivelous spew before that world reaches the point of no return. Mountainhead is an apocalyptic comedy very much of our time, for better or worse.
Our Call: I laughed a lot at this big fat bummer of a movie. How about that for cognitive dissonance? STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
