Mountainhead review: Nothing monumental about this vicious satire 

Film: Mountainhead
Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Ramy Youssef, Hadley Robinson, Andy Daly, Ali Kinkade, Daniel Oreskes
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: * * *
Runtime: 112 min.

‘Mountainhead’ is basically a lite version of ‘Succession’, the series, created by writer-director Jesse Armstrong. Here four friends, all super rich, who take themselves quite seriously, get together against the backdrop of a rolling international crisis. The award-winning creator of the landmark HBO series chooses a similar theme for his directorial debut with an exploration of toxic masculinity and super-rich people behaving as if they own the world or are about to. 
 
Randall (Steve Carell) the venture capitalist, “Venis”(Cory Michael Smith) a social media titan like Musk, Sam (Ramy Youssef) an optimist with an AI moderation system are being hosted by Hugo Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman) in a huge glass-and-steel mansion atop a mountain in Utah. Yalk also called “Soups” who is trying to sell a meditation app, is the poorest of this group because his fortune has not yet reached a billion. 
 
Proposed by Hugo this reunion hangout was meant to be fun, not business. The weekend at first proves relaxing, as they indulge in sporting activities and play out rich men pranks. But they can’t help checking their mobiles for info about the outside world, which is going berserk. An apocalypse has erupted outside their safe cocoon - the planet has begun to unravel. Violent conflicts, financial markets melting, the internet being taken over by disinformation, widespread riots, bank failures, governments being toppled, violence everywhere and worse. But these guys only think of how they can profit from it. Hugo even thinks of taking over one or another South American country. 
 
When the water suddenly goes out, they retreat to the underground bunker, complete with bowling alley and rock-climbing wall. The plot turns darker, more farcical and absurd than convincing though. Though these men come across as juvenile, their tech-banter is entertaining up to a point. There’s only so much verbosity one can deal with, though. Armstrong loses sight of the big picture and makes a slapdash attempt to be woke. But there’s plenty of nasty wit and profanity dished out by sharply etched characters. Sharp incisive dialogue is what uplifts this film from the ordinary. There’s nothing pretentious here but it’s also not momentous.