‘Mountainhead' reviews: Jesse Armstrong's ‘Succession' follow-up is ‘rich in laughs' but focuses too much on ‘cruel intentionality'
Just like Succession, HBO's gone-but-not-forgotten drama series, Mountainhead comes from the satiric mind of Jesse Armstrong and focuses on a group of unserious billionaires. However, critics aren't as enthusiastic about the new TV movie as they were with its Emmy-winning predecessor.
Mountainhead follows four wealthy tech bros — played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, and Ramy Youssef — who meet at a swanky ski resort. Their retreat soon descends into chaos as a global crisis unfolds, exacerbated by the actions of one of their companies.
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Armstrong is a seven-time Emmy winner for Succession (four for writing, three for producing), but this is his feature directorial debut, and critics are well aware of the fact. Fair or not, most of the initial reviews included comparisons between Succession and Mountainhead.
The new telefilm, with its runtime of 109 minutes, is "rich in laughs but lacks the substance of Succession," says Shaina Weatherhead (Collider), who adds, "If you come solely for the comedic stylings of four powerhouse actors, Mountainhead will certainly win you over if you don't take it too seriously."
Christian Zilko (IndieWire) writes, "While Succession was all about delusion, with the Roy children cluelessly thinking the family business needed them while everyone maneuvered around their childish stunts, Mountainhead is all about the cruel intentionality of men who actively choose to burn down our world and just might have the competence to do it."
Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) says, "This is a movie driven by the line-by-line need for fierce, nasty, funny punched-up stuff in the dialogue, and narrative arcs and character development aren't the point. But as with Succession, this does a really good job of persuading you that, yes, this is what our overlords are really like."
Addressing the satire angle that Armstrong is known for, Chris Barsanti (Slant Magazine) writes, "If there's a moral here, it might be that the only thing worse than a competitive billionaire is a bored one. By following Succession with another acid-singed comedy about a slightly different subset of 0.01 percenters, Armstrong is sticking to a kind of satire he knows well."
Liz Shannon Miller (Consequence) says, "Armstrong's dialogue flows like no one else's, but there's something just a little bit unbearable about listening to stupid people talk like they're smart, and Armstrong doesn't pull away from that aspect. There was an emotional core to the Succession story ... The lads up on the mountain, meanwhile, are all about posturing amongst themselves."
Mountainhead delivers "a decent amount of laughs," says Tim Grierson (The A.V. Club), who calls it "a wry smackdown of four insanely rich bros hanging out at a gaudy estate in the Utah mountains." However, the movie "is best when Armstrong puts satire aside for rage, seething at the tech kingpins destroying our society to increase their profits."
Nick Schager (The Daily Beast) writes, "Prescient about the dangers posed by AI and, more pressingly, the cutthroat, avaricious, and egotistical madmen who wield it, the film is an incisive portrait of 21st-century villainy, if ultimately a satire that can't quite locate the funny in the horror."
Finally, Nadia Dalimonte (Next Best Picture) says, "Mountainhead arrives at a time when reality has certainly caught up with Armstrong's sharp eye, making the film a depressingly perceptive mirror of the current state of the world."
Mountainhead will premiere May 31 on HBO and Max. It will compete at the 2025 Emmys in the TV movie/limited series categories.
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