‘The Moment’ Review: Charli xcx’s ‘Brat’ Victory Lap Becomes a Self-Mythologizing Mockumentary

Charli xcx is magnetic, but ‘The Moment’ feels less like a satire than a fan-only scrapbook — funny in flashes, weightless when it needs bite.

There’s a version of ‘The Moment’ that plays like the perfect postscript to a cultural peak: a sharp, unfiltered mockumentary that captures what it feels like when a pop star becomes a movement, and then has to survive the hangover. The premise is instantly enticing. Charli xcx, fresh off the era-defining jolt of ‘Brat’ and staring down the next phase of her career, turns the camera on herself and the people around her — the meetings, the branding, the commodification, the creeping pressure to keep the party going even when the music has already moved on.

And for a while, that’s exactly what the film is. It’s quick, loose, knowingly chaotic in the way that mockumentaries often need to be to feel alive. Charli, as a screen presence, has that rare “I don’t even need to perform” charisma — the kind that makes even dead-air moments feel like a choice. She’s funny without trying too hard, and more importantly, she’s believable as someone constantly toggling between public performance and private exhaustion.

The film’s best stretch is its early run of backroom absurdities: the deals, the forced synergy, the meetings where everyone talks in sanitized, monetizable language while pretending they’re still talking about art. The satire isn’t exactly subtle, but it doesn’t need to be. Pop stardom has become so aggressively transactional that the joke is often just the truth said out loud with a straight face.

The funniest idea in the film — and the one that lands with the most modern sting — is how easily a cultural moment gets packaged into something you can “own,” “buy into,” or literally swipe a card for. ‘The Moment’ understands that the entertainment industry’s first instinct isn’t to celebrate success, it’s to extract it. The film’s world is filled with people who treat “Brat” not as an album but as a product ecosystem, a brand language, a vibe that can be licensed until it collapses under its own weight.

That’s the material that should’ve made ‘The Moment’ feel dangerous. But the deeper it goes, the less willing it becomes to actually commit to the cruelty of what it’s depicting.

Instead, the film pivots into something more conflicted: half parody, half self-portrait, half behind-the-scenes mythmaking. And yes, that math doesn’t totally work — because the movie itself doesn’t always know what it wants to be. When it leans into comedy, it works. When it tries to shift into a more reflective, almost reverent examination of Charli’s impact, it loses momentum and starts to feel like a film about the importance of being important.

Alexander Skarsgård’s presence helps keep the energy up, playing a hilariously self-assured creative force who feels like the embodiment of every overpraised “visionary” who mistakes chaos for genius. He’s entertaining because he’s so committed to the bit — the kind of character who can derail a room simply by believing he’s the smartest person in it. The creative clashes he sparks are among the movie’s liveliest moments, and they highlight one of the film’s most interesting undercurrents: how easily art gets hijacked by ego once money shows up.

But even this thread runs thin. The joke doesn’t escalate as much as it repeats. The film circles the same idea — corporate creep, artistic compromise, the pressure to sustain a moment — without building toward a sharper punchline or a deeper emotional payoff.

That’s the central frustration of ‘The Moment’: it’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it keeps choosing the safer option. It flirts with being a brutal takedown of celebrity culture, then backs away. It hints at real anxiety, then smooths it into something more aesthetic than honest. It wants to critique the machine while still feeling cool inside the machine, and that tension leaves the film strangely toothless.

The mockumentary style is meant to feel intimate and unvarnished, but it also becomes a shield. The vérité shakiness and choppy pacing suggest authenticity, yet the film rarely delivers the kind of uncomfortable clarity that makes this genre hit. It’s not messy enough to be raw, and not sharp enough to be savage. It lands somewhere in the middle: watchable, stylish, occasionally funny — but ultimately too self-aware to be fully satisfying.

For fans, that may be enough. In fact, it may be the point. There’s a strong chance the film plays better if you lived inside the “Brat Summer” wave in real time, if the references feel like memory instead of mythology. In that context, ‘The Moment’ becomes a companion piece, a curated aftertaste, a scrapbook of a year that felt like it belonged to a certain kind of person at a certain kind of moment.

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For everyone else, it’s harder to shake the feeling that you’re watching a film that assumes you already agree with it — that you already know why this era mattered, why it was seismic, why it deserves a movie in the first place. And if you don’t? The film doesn’t really invite you in. It shrugs, smirks, and moves on.

Charli xcx is absolutely the reason to watch. She’s effortlessly compelling, and there’s a version of this project where her performance anchors something sharper, stranger, and more lasting. But as it stands, ‘The Moment’ plays like a victory lap that never quite turns into a sprint — more fan service than full-bodied satire, more vibe than vision.

It’s entertaining. It’s fashionable. It’s occasionally clever. But for a film about a cultural moment defined by confidence, chaos, and audacity, it’s surprisingly hesitant to go all the way.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

CREDITS

Release date: Friday, Jan. 30

Cast: Charli xcx, Alexander Skarsgard, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Hailey Benton Gates

Director: Aidan Zamiri

Writers: Aidan Zamiri, Bertie Brandes

Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes

Rated: R

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