MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW: Charming Like Your Most Annoying Friend [1.5/5]
Smarm and Sanctimony
[Rating 1.5/5] - dir. Jesse Armstrong - 2025 - United States - Rated R - 1h 52m - Dramedy
Mountainhead is a Liberal thought experiment-cum-fantasy populated with unlikeable shades of the same know-it-all, played by three TV darlings and one hot rookie.
Let’s start with the strongest: I’ll allow Ramy Youssef as many self-important speeches as he’d like to make thanks to those deep pools of expressive brown eyes. Steve Carell took his time learning how to affect a douche-bro just so. His role on The Four Seasons detracts from the perceived quality of his performance here purely due to something akin to party vote-splitting in politics. Some will prefer this, some will prefer that, and neither will get its due. Relative newcomer Cory Michael Smith sticks confidently to a “Chevy Chase” zone. Lastly, it is a relief Schwartzman plays the goofiest and least smug of the four main characters. I’m tapped out on that; his flavour of self-involved peaked in Listen Up, Philip (2014).
So what do these douchebags do? What do they have in common? Why are they together?
Well, wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall of a meeting between the world’s most socially broken tech overlords (Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey) and hear them discuss the world’s issues, with the added bonus of the baggage that comes with being old friends?
What if it’s for the purpose of skewering them via ham-fisted satire?
Oh, you wouldn’t?
Yeah neither would I.
The game of putting words in the mouths of approximations to real life ego-driven maniacs in order for one show creator / screenwriter, or a few, to express their views and make unsubtle (if true) comments on the the powerful doesn’t seem like an attractive prospect to me, as I am not their mom. Masturbate in private.
There are only two saving graces: 1) The actors give it their all; 2) I doubt it’ll affect their reputations and filmographies longterm.
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P.S. And it reeks of COVID-Project-itis.
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Mountainhead is out now on Crave/HBO.
Selected Movie Quote: “Was your interior decorator Ayn Bland?”
[Rating 1.5/5] - dir. Jesse Armstrong - 2025 - United States - Rated R - 1h 52m - Dramedy