Charli XCX Mock-Doc Has Big Ideas, Little Laughs

It begins with flashing images. Charli XCX moves and dances and writhes around in a dark setting, lit and edited for maximum epileptic effect. Splatters of neon green invade. This is the Brat aesthetic. And then it’s over. The shoot is done, and the only question left is, can she do it again? Can Charli keep going? That’s the animating question of The Moment, the new mockumentary from director Aidan Zamiri, based on an idea from Charli XCX herself. Ostensibly set during the weeks leading up to her Brat Tour in 2024, the film takes a satirical look at the stresses and absurdities of becoming a pop-culture sensation.

The idea is a clever one, existing somewhere between Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap, and Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix’s I’m Still Here, which gets referenced in the movie. Charli, playing a version of herself, strips back the varnish of stardom to poke fun at the circus, but also her role in it. If not quite a lacerating self-portrait, it’s nonetheless honest about the impossible push and pull of suddenly being made responsible for a massive, corporatized machine whose incentives — to run good things into the ground, to exploit “fans” as loyal consumers, to abide bad actors — exist in opposition to her art. Brat Summer can’t last forever, but what if it can? Should it? And if not, can Charli effectively kill it? Most crucially, does she want to?

If that sounds like a good and complex exploration of serious ideas, that’s because it is. Only The Moment is also a comedy, and unfortunately it’s one with few laughs. There are chuckles to be had, and at least one transcendent joke, but the film’s insistence on the gravity of its subject is often at odds with its comedic sensibility, which at its best resembles Armando Iannucci’s political satires The Thick of It and Veep, particularly when scenes center on Charli’s team of beleaguered staff, each constantly jockeying for attention and control as her career shoots into the stratosphere after years and years of being an almost-It Girl. This is where the film is most on-point, too, cataloging the mania of attempting to wrangle a phenomenon as a fundamentally comedic enterprise.

A24

What stands in the film’s way, then, is not an absence of intelligence, or even craft — Zamiri is an excellent music video director, and the film is shot by acclaimed cinematographer Sean Price Williams — but a lack of distance on Charli’s part. That’s natural, of course, and perhaps to be expected. In fact, many of the most insightful elements of The Moment come from Charli’s keen observations about her own experience. Her mounting anxiety-verging-on-depression throughout the film, for example, isn’t rendered as pure pity party. Rather, Charli implicates herself, suggesting the overwhelming nature of her sudden launch into whatever’s left of the monoculture was also a paralyzing one, and paralysis is a problem when so many people rely on you. Rather than making a film about an evil record label and corporate sponsors trying to control her, The Moment locates the real problem within Charli herself. Being so overwhelmed, she rarely brings herself to making any decisions, passing the buck constantly to her staff and others, who flail about attempting to live up to both Charli the person and Charli the business.

When the movie finds humor, it’s almost always in its coterie of characters played by the likes of comedians like Kate Berlant and Jamie Demetriou. Canny casting pays off in other ways, like having Rosanna Arquette as a record label exec. Then there are all the cameos from stars playing themselves. Scenes with Rachel Sennott, Kylie Jenner, Julia Fox, and others are a nice amusement, and occasionally earn a laugh, though one would’ve hoped for more.

Charli XCX Alexander Skarsgard The Moment

If The Moment has any saving grace as a comedy, it’s in the casting of Alexander Skarsgård as a documentarian hired to shoot a concert film of the Brat Tour. Skarsgård is no stranger to comedy — he was in Zoolander, after all — but he’s only become more adept with time, to the point that now he can be funny just by standing there. A wonderful example of an actor understanding exactly how good he looks, and exactly how silly that can be in almost any normal context. His low-cut shirts and puka-shell necklaces are the icing on the cake of a character whose hilariously bad ideas and need for control wreak havoc within Charli’s inner circle.

Most affected is Charli’s fictional best friend and creative director, Celeste, played by Hailey Benton Gates, who is funny in her own right, but also a great foil for Charli as she becomes increasingly detached and frustrated by the obligations of fame. The growing split between Charli and Celeste is the film’s emotional fulcrum and leads to its most unvarnished moment, as the pop star unloads all her insecurities on her friend. Again, though, this is all played just a bit too straight, blunting the film’s satirical edge in favor of social media-era honesty. And while the honesty is insightful and appreciated, it reveals a degree of solipsism in the project that ultimately places the film more within the lineage of Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana or Beyoncé’s Homecoming than the mockumentaries taking that level of self-regard down a peg — or 11.

The Moment, in the end, is Charli’s way of putting a capper on her Brat era, sending it off with love and a little venom while asserting control over her own narrative. It’s smart, and well-made, and occasionally funny, but it never quite escapes feeling like a canny bit of brand management. Of course, that being the subject of The Moment does soften whatever bad taste would normally come from a project like that. What’s left is a fine little film, in which Charli XCX emerges as a compelling screen performer, and an even more compelling thinker, but whose ultimate value is mostly as an object attached to an album than a great film in its own right.

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