Joel on Film

Perhaps Charli XCX, the British pop-star musician, wanted to put a moratorium on the type of concert documentary that has, particularly in the last few years, been extraordinarily popular in movie theaters. If that was the reason behind The Moment, a mockumentary set in the aftermath of her 2024 album brat, then one should give her a bit of credit about having a sense of humor about the whole thing. On a more specific level, this movie seems to be about how the brat tour kind of broke her a little bit.

The artist is a very good sport here, playing a slightly fictionalized or, at least, exaggerated version of herself in a state of exhaustion after the album, its specific shade of the color green, and a music video starring a handful of recognizable actor friends have all had their way with her. Some of this movie, directed by regular Charli music-video collaborator Aidan Zamiri, is about Charli trying to figure out for herself how to shift from post-brat fervor to a space where she can think about what comes next. It’s sort of a shame about the rest of the movie, though.

The one notable thing about this screenplay, co-written by Zamiri and Bertie Brandes (a satirical columnist making her feature debut), is that it leans less on Charli’s music than anticipated. This is probably for the best, since the journey here is all about the ways in which the singer is trying to escape it, but also undeniably disappointing. The dance-pop album moves from one hyperactive to the next, after all, and what we get here are merely some snippets as the plot, which has Charli fighting with representatives about the creative direction of a concert documentary, gets going.

The movie, though, is so committed to the broad satire of the bit that it loses sight of Charli for a while, stranding her in a dead-end vacation subplot on the island of Ibiza to sit around and wait while the actual plot happens back at the studio where the documentary is being produced. For her suffering, Charli’s creative partner Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates) is stuck actually dealing with Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård), a terminally pretentious and overtly off-putting veteran of the concert-doc-industrial complex, who wants to change everything about the brat iconography and turn it all into some philosophical statement.

This half of the movie is a wholesale distraction from the other ways in which the filmmakers are satirizing a few days in the bustling life of a pop star, mostly because we’re never quite sold on Johannes as some heralded genius. He’s been forced into the production by the record company (which, one supposes, is also a good sport about all this, given they’re named and have a major role), where a major executive (played by Rosanna Arquette) and her team have convinced Charli’s representatives (including a very funny Jamie Demetriou as the harried Tim) that Johannes is the right choice. Skarsgård, though, simply plays the weirdest notes of the character, turning him into a joke without a punch line.

Once Charli returns to the studio, where Johannes’ input has fully transformed the production into its own unwieldy beast, the film finds some of its footing again. It’s simply quite funny to watch the whole thing implode, but then, the movie risks a sharp turn toward sentimentality that feels unearned, as Charli and Celeste’s personal and professional partnerships are superficially jeopardized, a minor scandal involving a credit card design threatens Charli’s reputation, and the movie desperately tries to make a point with a final, would-be-touching speech.

It’s a little too much for a movie with a supposedly satirical foundation to handle, and that’s really a shame. The Moment nearly gets at something about the state of the pop-star world, seen through the self-deprecation and the self-aware clarity of an actual pop star, but a few too many distractions get in the way to be ignored.

Rating: **½ (out of ****)