'Mountainhead' review: 'Succession' creator skewers super-rich in painfully funny black comedy movie

Tom's Guide

31-05-2025

Watching HBO Max's new movie "Mountainhead" was one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences I've had in 2025 — and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.
"How can that possibly be a compliment?" I hear you ask. Well, that's because "Mountainhead" is the latest project from "Succession" and "Peep Show" creator Jesse Armstrong, a writer well-versed in bringing us stark satire and repugnant (yet incredibly watchable) characters.
"Mountainhead" is now available to stream on HBO Max, and it is, in my opinion, every bit as entertaining as what he's brought us before. The "problem," if you could call it that, is simply that "Mountainhead" sees us spending time with quite possibly Armstrong's least likable set of characters yet.
If you dive in, you'll be spending a little over 100 minutes with a crass, crude cadre of odious billionaire tech bros as they hole up in a luxury getaway while the world falls apart outside.
They're almost cartoonishly evil, and because laughing at them is quite fun, I still managed to enjoy my stay quite so much. Here's my take on "Mountainhead" and why it's worth streaming now.
"Mountainhead" picks up as our four super-rich "friends" — Generative AI magnate and chief crisis architect, Venis (Cory Michael Smith), aging, ailing wealth guru Randall (Steve Carell), "Souper", as in "Soup Kitchen"/Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman) and their more liberal developer friend, Jeff (Ramy Youssef) — unite for a poker hang at Soup's newly constructed, utterly soulless Ayn Rand homage of a home.
What follows is two hours of increasingly farcical drama, as the billionaire bros trade jabs and business jargon, musing on the state of the world (and how they could perfect it) as the crisis outside continues to spiral, and they continue to scroll past countless horrific events on their devices ... even though they're the architects of that collapse.
"Mountainhead" is hot-button, of-the-moment filmmaking (thanks in part to having been shot in March and cut together in a short space of time) and dialogue-heavy viewing. Chiefly, it achieves its goals by gleefully skewering tech titans through a one-two punch of witty writing and excellent ensemble work.
All four of our stars deserve praise for their respective turns, though my favorite of the bunch might just be Schwartzman's self-humiliating, slimy turn as Soup, the group's "gracious" host and "impoverished" multi-millionaire who really just wants his pals to, and I quote, "bust a B-nut" and invest in his new health and lifestyle app.
Without Armstrong's writing, this would be an intolerable nightmare trip, and yet Armstrong serves up a near-constant stream of lines and laughs that just manage to keep the sense of dread at bay.
Spoken by this talented cast, the gleefully nasty script comes alive, and it's this bleakly comic combo that makes our stay at this plutocrat's playhouse somehow still a treat.
"Mountainhead" is about as unsubtle as you can get, hammering home again and again that you are spending your time with awful people.
That watching the movie didn't feel like I was being forced simultaneously to watch paint dry, endlessly doom-scroll and listen to someone demand I plow my entire life savings into cryptocurrency is testament to Jesse Armstrong and the ensemble's comic sensibilities.
"Mountainhead" is a painfully funny swing at the super-rich, one that finds plenty of laughs in even its bleakest and most despicable moments. If you can stomach spending this much time with terrible technocrats and unchecked egos, you're in for a treat.
"Mountainhead" is now available on HBO Max and will be broadcast at 8 p.m. ET this evening on HBO. Viewers in the UK will be able to watch "Mountainhead" at 2 a.m. BST on Sky Atlantic and NOW from Sunday, June 1.