Film

Charli XCX’s Mockumentary is an Unmitigated Disaster

24 January 2026

The best one can probably say about The Moment, Charli XCX’s horribly misguided mockumentary, is that the enigmatic star has used her considerable artistic and social clout to make something completely divorced from her astronomical expectations. This is not, as was maybe advertised, a loosely fictionalized behind-the-scenes look at the Brat Tour. There is no music save for a needle drop of Bittersweet Symphony. Instead, the film is like a bizarre cross between This is Spinal Tap and Uncut Gems, in which XCX plays a mostly aloof version of herself until she is pushed to a breaking point by the demands of commercialization and the optimization of her own brand, all while trying to honor her own voice.

None of it works. I’ll cut to the quick: The Moment is an unmitigated disaster. There is a certain hubris to making a film that is absolutely devoid of stakes, but it’s hard to describe that gall as anything but absurdly arrogant, or else woefully out of touch. In retrospect, Though director Aidan Zamiri has proven his mettle with top level music artist and high-level advertisements, he has none whatsoever building a credible piece of fiction. I’m not sure if this is a good start.

The Moment is a Total Misfire on Nearly Every Level

The Moment is a shapeless, thoroughly uninteresting exercise in self-effacement. Any attempt the movie makes at peeling back the layers of an international icon is wholly for naught. Most unforgivable is that it lacks any kind of genuine energy until it suddenly, irrationally, depicts Charli having a breakdown because a facialist at a fancy resort in Ibiza refuses to give her service.

As best as I can understand it, The Moment is a film about Charli XCX terrified of being perceived as too cringe. That’s about it. As the fictional XCX, Charli is exhausted by the whirlwind of attention she’s getting from corporations, her music label, her fans and her representation, but mostly she doesn’t seem to care about much of anything. The film portrays the Brat Tour as a millstone around her neck, and she just wants to escape it all.

But the label has earned too much money off of her, and so they brainstorm ways to make Brat Summer last forever, settling on an idea to bring in Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård), a South African concert director whose performatively woke attitude belies a misogyny anyone could smell from a mile away. Skarsgård is ridiculous and obnoxious in a character that is so cartoonishly buffoonish it seems impossible to believe he’d actually exist.

Charli is skeptical of Johannes, but for some reason is unwilling to put the final kabosh on his employment because of… the pressure she’s facing? I guess? Meanwhile, her friend and concert director Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates, doing all she can to bring a degree of normalcy to this circus) seems to truly understand the artist’s wishes but is drowned out by the sea of noise around her. The biggest source of tension in the film is between Celeste and Johannes in their battle over Charli, but none of their artistic disagreements register as either real nor interesting in any conceivable way.

At the same time as she prepares for the big show, she is pulled into a comically capitalistic sell-out of a partnership with a bank that is trying to market a new credit card for young queers. It’s a decently funny set-up, but the eventual payoff of its implications is first played as an apocalyptic event before being fully cast aside as inconsequential.

The Moment is mostly improvised by actors who have no experience doing so. The actors who do know what they’re doing in this regard are on the margins. Kate Berlant is hilarious in her short screen time as Charli’s hair and makeup person; Richard Perez gets a couple great one-liners in the background as the assistant to Tammy (Rosanna Arquette), the head of the record label; Rachel Sennott is essentially the same character she plays in I Love L.A., in exactly one scene; Jamie Demetriou, whose show Stath Lets Flats is one of the best British comedies of the last couple decades, has almost zero room to be funny as Charli’s nervous manager, Tim.

I guess if you’re that famous the idea of being seen as cringe is so unthinkable that it feels like a nightmare, but it feels a bit unfair to assume that I, or anyone, can relate to something so absurdly innocuous.

When it isn’t trying to be funny, it’s trying very hard to be a serious self-appraisal, and it is to Charli’s credit that she doesn’t exactly portray herself in a positive light. She earnestly seems to feel crushed by the weight of her exponential growth as a superstar and the impossible demands of staying true to her creative voice, as well as the financial desires of those that depend on her. But the film neither works as straight comedy nor as a tense character drama.

Instead, what comes out in the wash is a masturbatory mess. Zamiri’s direction is cataclysmic. The whole film is uncomfortably situated between wanting to skewer the very world Charli has helped to create and sincerely unmask the human behind a movement. But neither route is served well. I guess if you’re that famous the idea of being seen as cringe is so unthinkable that it feels like a nightmare, but it feels a bit unfair to assume that I, or anyone, can relate to something so absurdly innocuous. Though, if Charli’s sincere desire is to kill brat, I think it’s fair to say she’s done it.