![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/05e4b9b6922a711419408aa5f9720ae1a3-The-Moment.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n The Charlie XCX film is neither funny enough to be a mockumentary nor real enough to be a concert doc. The result is pure brand management.
\n Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute\n <\/p>\n
Charli XCX<\/a>\u2019s pop persona is such a delectable blend of sincerity and pastiche that the idea of a mockumentary around her life is a no-brainer. The Moment\u2019s opening salvo, a montage of news reports talking about the runaway success of the singer\u2019s 2024 album Brat<\/a> and the attendant pandemonium of \u201cBrat Summer\u201d coverage, shows the way. The spotlight on Charli is already so crazy that you theoretically only need to push everything a few small degrees to fully enter the realm of parody.<\/p>\n In practice, it turns out you need a little more than that. The Moment, directed by music-video wunderkind Aidan Zamiri, feels like a half-hearted hybrid of a real concert doc and a This Is Spinal Tap-like satire. It\u2019s a little too afraid to go too far in either direction, and the end result is pure brand management. It follows Charli as she prepares for the start of her latest tour, all the while dealing with various sponsorships and media demands: a five second radio promo here, a credit card partnership and an absurdly tight outfit there. So long as the movie remains focused on this whirlpool of activity, it\u2019s on fairly solid footing: The craze around Brat Summer really was quite something, and Zamiri compellingly conveys the chaos and confusion. Sometimes it\u2019s hard to tell what\u2019s real and what\u2019s comic invention.<\/p>\n But a note of tonal dissonance begins to creep in early on. Charlie\u2019s record label wants to keep Brat Summer going \u2013 why shouldn\u2019t this moment last a year or two or more? \u2013 and they\u2019ve struck a deal with Amazon to make a concert documentary, directed by renowned and stupefyingly pretentious filmmaker Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd, making a fine meal of a one-note character), who speaks in New Age truisms and pretends at artistic integrity all the while pushing a bland, corporate-friendly vision of Charli\u2019s aesthetic. In so doing, Johannes and his team begin to muscle out Charli\u2019s longtime creative director Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates), a conflict the pop star\u2019s hapless team of assistants doesn\u2019t quite know how to handle.<\/p>\n The problem with The Moment is that it\u2019s too afraid of its star. Charli is playing a version of herself in the film, but it\u2019s not a cinematically interesting version: She\u2019s confused and stressed by all the attention and the drama around her, sure, but that\u2019s something we could have gotten from a straight documentary as well. So many of the people she runs into are objects of mockery \u2013 whether it\u2019s the annoying Johannes, or her milquetoast manager (Jamie Demetriou), or a cut-throat record label chief (Roseanna Arquette), or an awkwardly fangirling make-up artist, or a particularly suicidal fan \u2013 that the gist of the movie seems to be that it\u2019s really, really hard to be Charli XCX when everybody else around her is so insane or stupid. Which might even be true, but it is surely not the message The Moment intended to send.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a way to make stuff like this work. Larry David did it for 25 years on HBO, portraying himself as both the voice of reason and a comically oblivious punchline on Curb Your Enthusiasm. But it takes some self-awareness and a willingness for self-ridicule. There are a few promising bits, mainly involving other celebrities playing themselves. Charli runs into Kylie Jenner at a particularly vulnerable moment, which leads to some poor decisions on her part, and the film briefly seems like it\u2019s coming to life \u2013 but it\u2019s just a minor stab at dimensionality. A late-breaking monologue from Charli about her lifelong desire to be cool and fit in doesn\u2019t do the trick, either. In fact, it does the opposite, somehow turning this putative satire into a melodramatic miasma of self-justification.<\/p>\n Charli has always seemed quite savvy about her public image, so maybe the reason The Moment half-asses it is that nobody has fully thought the film through. They all just kind of want to make a Charli XCX movie but they don\u2019t really want it to be like other musician docs. They want to have a bit of fun with it, which is after all her brand. But the point of a Christopher Guest-style satire isn\u2019t that some people are on some level totally crazy \u2014 it\u2019s that everybody is. And the point of a behind-the-scenes rock doc is that we\u2019re getting something that feels like a true portrait of the artist. The Moment thinks it can have the best of both worlds, but it gives us neither.<\/p>\n Sign up for The Critics<\/p>\n A weekly dispatch on the cultural discourse, for subscribers only.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n