Mountainhead review: First film from Succession creator promises 'eat the rich' but neglects to feed the audience

Australia Broadcast Center

04-06-2025

The "eat the rich" subgenre has been so well covered in the past decade that it's become overexposed. But the trope du jour does still offer a singular cinematic delight: watching entitled, horrible, rich people get what's coming to them.
What: Four tech billionaires hide out in a palatial mansion while their creations tear the world apart.
Starring: Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, Jason Schwartzman
Directed by: Jesse Armstrong
When: Streaming now on Max
Likely to make you feel: like you've already seen this story
Whether they end up bankrupt, castaways or as human s'mores, there is a catharsis to seeing billionaires suffer in fiction because they so rarely receive their comeuppance in real life.
In Succession creator Jesse Armstrong's first foray into writing and directing a feature film, he asks: "What if I did an eat-the-rich film, but just give the audience 'the rich' part?"
Mountainhead is a very long bottle episode of TV, set in the most expensive bottle you've ever seen. Tech creator Hugo 'Souper' Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman) — short in both stature and standing (his net worth is less than $1 billion) — invites three of his closest frenemies to his steely, sprawling, secluded compound for a weekend of poker.
Randall Garrett (Steve Carell) — net worth $63 billion — is the oldest of the bunch and he can feel it. Multiple doctors have diagnosed him with an incurable cancer which he rejects, dismissing his latest physician as a "simpleton".
Venis 'Ven' Parish (Cory Michael Smith) — net worth $221 billion — has just pushed a frightening new AI-generative feature onto his omnipresent social media platform, Traam.
Ven's actually only on the trip because he needs to schmooze Jeff Abredazi (Ramy Youssef) — net worth $59 billion and quickly climbing — owner of an AI company whose code way outstrips Traam's version.
In a classic horse-before-the-cart move, Traam's AI isn't so great at sorting fact from fiction, leading to unverifiable videos that flare political tensions internationally. Ven needs Jeff's superior tech to fend off faceless federal forces that are putting pressure on Ven to fix his platform before fake videos tear the planet apart.
Because all these man-child characters have the emotional intelligence of an egg, Ven can't quite muster the humility to ask for Jeff's help.
As the quartet trade barbs and only semi-literate technobabble in Armstrong's trademark galloping, insult-a-minute dialogue, real-time disasters trickle in from their smartphones: Gangs in South America are killing innocents after deep fake videos called them informants; AI-generated deep fakes of ideologically fuelled violence have inflamed conflict between multiple countries.
In response, the four men cast themselves as kings of the new world, indulging in casual debate over who is going to be installed as leader of which impoverished country.
The world crises in Mountainhead were so true to life that Youssef says he found it difficult to differentiate between the horror filtering in from his prop phone and his real phone.
"At a certain point, I didn't really know which was which, and unfortunately a lot of these things started to blend together," he says.
"I think our emotions were definitely tested with how escalating everything in the real world is right now."
And therein lies the real problem with Mountainhead. In a world where almost indistinguishable headlines are shrieked at us from all angles, why on earth would we want an uncanny recreation as entertainment?
In the past week, AI-generated deepfake videos shared widely across Twitter and Facebook inflamed the conflict between India and Pakistan, with experts claiming the platforms didn't do enough to temper the misinformation.
Youssef points to Armstrong's strength of tone — which kept millions engaged in the abhorrent actions of his Succession characters — as the saving grace of this purported comedy.
"It never felt like we were making fun of what was happening. We were more making fun of the people who are so reckless," he says.
Which could work, if any of the characters did or said anything half as disturbingly comical as their real-life counterparts. Randall takes obvious inspiration from billionaires like US venture capitalist Bryan Johnson, who is perhaps more well-known for his radical attempts at "anti-aging".
But absolutely nothing Randall says in his ample screen time is as hilariously dystopian as Johnson taking a whole litre of his 17-year-old son's blood to put in his body in an attempt to reverse aging, only to turn around and say the process had "no benefits detected".
Ven, with his problematic social platform, weird connection with his infant child and direct line to the president, is reminiscent of Elon Musk. But the character's cringe displays pale in comparison to Musk's gamut of baffling behaviours or squirm-worthy jokes — from setting up a Tesla showroom on the White House lawn to his obsession with 420 gags.
Mountainhead was turned around at an astonishing rate. According to Armstrong, he pitched the film to HBO in December last year and production was wrapped by April. This kind of accelerated birth should make the comedy feel fresh and relevant. Instead, Armstrong makes observations and comedy that feel not just dated, but unnecessary.
His visual metaphors — like the cold, cruel design of Souper's "home" and the constant, overflowing tables of food (TikTok creators identified luxury grub as the new status symbol ages ago) — are cartoonish in a way that makes you cringe for the creator. The machine gun references to "going to the moon" and bunkers in New Zealand are groan-worthy.
His filming style — all shaky cam and quick zoom-ins — ape the reality-TV feel of Succession, but can't pull anything out of Mountainhead's characters except insufferably flat reaction shots.
It's clear Armstrong thinks his dip into the world of wannabe tech oligarchs is clever and new, but it quickly becomes repetitive and boring. You can recreate the same effect by doomscrolling Twitter for 20 minutes and you might see a cute cat gif.
There are going to be Succession-heads who thought the show deserved 10 more seasons and will likely christen Mountainhead meaningful satire.
However, if you do not fall into this group, I implore you to go for a run, touch grass, hug a loved one, draw a picture, bake a cake — all of these actions are more radical in their defiance of dangerous billionaires than watching a rushed recreation of our current societal woes.
Mountainhead is streaming on Max now.