The Moment Review: Charli XCX Navigates the Perils of Pop Stardom in Defanged Satire
Charli XCX's highly anticipated meta-mockumentary The Moment arrives with a smart premise but ultimately struggles to deliver meaningful satire. The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, explores the pop star's ambivalence towards her own cultural moment during the celebrated Brat summer era.
A High-Concept Premise That Falters in Execution
Conceived by Charli XCX and written by close collaborators Aidan Zamiri and Bertie Brandes, The Moment presents a counter-factual narrative that imagines what might have happened if the singer had compromised her artistic vision while riding the wave of Brat's phenomenal success. The 113-minute film assumes a high level of fan literacy, meticulously tying its events to the real Brat social media timeline with impressive accuracy.
Despite this attention to detail, the film feels curiously inert, even for longtime fans. Director Aidan Zamiri creates a visually hypnotic experience with a warm, over-saturated palette that invites viewers into the frazzled psyche of a star at her peak. Sean Price Williams' dynamic verite-style cinematography effectively conveys the jittery reality of high-wire fame, while AG Cook's pulsating score seamlessly integrates into the chaotic celebrity world.
Character Dynamics and Satirical Shortcomings
Billed as a mockumentary, The Moment leans more toward psychological horror than comedy, presenting a ragged portrayal of an artist cracking under the pressure of achieving exactly what she wanted. Charli plays a heightened, volatile version of herself preparing for the Brat tour, surrounded by flat music-industry stereotypes including access-coveting assistants, feckless managers, and money-chasing record executives.
The film populates its celebrity milieu with internet It Girls like Rachel Sennott, cult-beloved alt-comics including Kate Berlant, and even features a cameo from Kylie Jenner that feels indistinguishable from her reality television appearances. Hailey Benton Gates delivers a solid performance as creative head Celeste, the only character genuinely looking out for Charli's artistic soul against the sharkish label executives.
Missed Opportunities and Structural Issues
Alexander Skarsgård appears as cartoonishly self-important director Johannes Godwin, brought in by the label to create a lucrative Amazon concert film. While Skarsgård's mere presence in a beanie generates more laughs than most written lines, the satire itself feels defanged and lacking in genuine risk. The film demonstrates the crucial difference between structurally funny concepts and actually funny execution.
Charli XCX shines brightest in moments of quieter vulnerability, particularly when caught off guard by a facialist's assessment of her ageing skin or spinning the collapse of her artistic integrity as liberation in a voice note. These scenes suggest the real tension the film attempts to explore: how to maintain humanity when everyone wants a piece of you, what gets sacrificed when you achieve your dreams, and who you become without the very thing that defines you.
Noble Efforts Against Conventional Logic
The film deserves credit for several against-the-grain elements, particularly its attempt to create a period piece about a cultural moment that's too recent to feel fresh yet not distant enough to evoke nostalgia. The creative team clearly understands the immense pressure to capitalize on a fame rocket, and there's no doubt the characters have real-life corollaries in the music industry.
However, The Moment ultimately suffers from muddled thematic sprawl and a late-stage satirical swing that, for this reviewer, jumped the shark. Against more seasoned performers like Gates and Skarsgård, Charli occasionally comes across as mechanical, struggling to push beyond her well-worn persona despite clearly understanding the material intimately.
The film raises important questions about artistic integrity, commercial pressure, and the nature of cultural moments, but seems content merely to ask them rather than provide substantive answers. The Moment screens at the Sundance Film Festival and will receive a theatrical release on January 30th, offering fans a visually striking but ultimately shallow exploration of what happens when a cultural moment threatens to consume the artist who created it.
