Following up his hit HBO show Succession, Jesse Armstong shows he isn’t done with the ultrawealthy as he delivers Mountainhead, an HBO original film where we follow four billionaire tech giants during their poker night. Tensions arise as an update to one of their apps kick starts an international crisis, and the four discuss their visions for the future of the human race.  Now, these four tech giant billionaires claim to be among the four smartest men in the world, but their ideas for the future obviously are incredibly ludicrous. In these conversations, Armstrong gives us hilarious and farcical solutions to the ever growing paranoia in our digital age, but I’m still wondering if the satire’s bite is as sharp as it could be.

 

Corey Michael Smith (Saturday Night), Ramey Yousef (Ramy), Steve Carell (The Four Seasons) and Jason Schwartzman (Asteroid City) embody the four billionaires; all of which are unique and fun to watch. Carell, in particular, offers a career high  performance as Randall. Jesse Armstrong has a knack for immersing the audience with his character dynamics, and they feel singular here, the cast being by far the best part of the film. Structurally, Mountainhead is a little strange. It’s two halves are at odds with one another as some plot elements go on the back burner and some of the bigger plot devices are concluded in incredibly unsatisfying ways. 

 

In ways, it feels like this could have worked better as a series for Armstrong - a lot of elements could have been considerably fleshed out, and it would allow more room to explore in this kind of premise. However, it all just feels messy and rushed despite being pretty compelling and funny. There’s great points and ideas about the real-life parallels to these characters, but when it starts to get into its dramatic territories, it’s weirdly uninteresting - which is disappointing considering this is from the creator of one of the best dramas in the last decade. Still, I feel Mountainhead is still worth checking out if you like laughing at idiotic rich people, there’s just that dramatic weight that’s sorely missing to make this feel in any ways major.