A SILLY DISPLAY OF WEALTH

The billionaire tech bros in Mountainhead show off in strange ways

- LOUIS LUCERO II

A low-key weekend with the boys looks a little different when the boys have a combined net worth of US$342.5 billion. For starters, it can be safely assumed that most attendees will arrive by private jet. And once you actually make it to the hang, you may find that the whiskey bottles are resting on little whiskey plinths.

With all those billions — and egos — swirling around, it can help to set a few ground rules.

“No deals, no meals, no high heels,” Steve Carell’s character reminds his friends shortly after they're reunited in Mountainhead, HBO Max's new satire about four tech titans on holiday while a disinformation crisis of their own making threatens to destroy civilisation as we know it.

As for Rule No.1, fair enough; no one wants to be pitched while off the clock. But it’s Rule No.2 that Souper (Jason Schwartzman), who welcomes the group into his 200m², new-build Utah ski lodge, seems to have the most consistent trouble with.

As the try-hard “poorest billionaire in the gang”, his hosting impulses constantly run afoul of the casual poker-night vibe that his masters-of-the-universe guests are seeking. Somewhere along the line, Souper seems to have learned that the way to a tech bro's pocketbook is through his stomach, and one of the movie's best recurring gags is the abundant yet untouched spread of snacks, which slowly proliferate like an algal bloom, first overtaking one kitchen island, then the one right behind it.

Souper's eagerness to impress eventually prompts one of the film’s most subtly ridiculous questions. Is turbot, a bottom-feeding European flatfish with eyes on the left side of its head, a meal in and of itself, or is it simply “a picking fish”? Huh?