Watching Charli XCX's mockumentary about a Brat concert film, The Moment, was a bit like my first time trying coke: Surrounded by well-dressed cool people, but also underwhelming and surprisingly lacking any real type of kick.
It's over a year since brat summer, but we all remember where we were and who we were in the wild days of 2024. Everyone wanted to be "so Julia," everyone was doing the "Apple" dance, and everyone was being their brightest, brashest, brattiest selves. In The Moment, a fictionalized version of Charli is struggling with the overwhelming success of the album and pressure from her label to capitalize on it and keep it from dying.
Directed by Aidan Zamiri (who directed Charli's "360" and "Guess" music videos), co-written between Zamiri and Bertie Brandes, with story by Charli herself, The Moment follows a fictionalized version of Charli XCX as her longtime creative collaborator, Celeste (played by Hailey Gates) and a big-name buffoonish director Johannes the label brought in (a stupendously hilarious Alexander Skarsgård) battle for control over her upcoming brat tour concert film.
While Celeste has been working closely with Charli for years and already understands who Charli is and what she wants brat to be, Johannas is blissfully clueless, suggesting light-up wristbands (“when you see it, it will blow your mind,” he tells an unconvinced Charli).
Much like the ultra-viral and groundbreaking album that inspired it, The Moment is full of hyperpop edits, flashing strobes, bright colors, and in-your-face attitude. Unlike the album, it's mostly forgettable. Unfortunately, the dramatic moments don't hit as they should, and while some comedic moments land, others only elicited a chuckle from the sold-out Eccles Theater audience.
We know it's so confusing sometimes to be a girl. While that's true, that confusion felt more like a cliche than a statement of vulnerability.
Charli XCX in her feature film The Moment about the pop star's studio album Brat.A24/Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Throughout the movie, Charli reminds us she’s not like “normal” pop stars like Leona Lewis and Coldplay, but when she faces off against a (barely) fictionalized version of Kylie Jenner, it was so un-brat I felt like Chris Martin would fit right in.
I’ve now seen Charli in three movies this festival, and she’s a decent actor, but doesn’t have the leading power of other pop stars-turned-actors like Ariana Grande or Lady Gaga — I don’t see any Oscar nominations in her future. While she’s supposed to be grappling with the battle between being an artist and being a star in the film, metatextually, she seems to be focusing solely on the star part with her Sundance takeover.
Skarsgård is the true star of the film, letting patronizing platitudes fall from his faux-feminist character’s mouth like a monsoon. He perfectly embodies the masculine commercialization of art, and looks like he loves doing it. If only the rest of the film matched him.
In the film, Charli realizes that the best way to cement brat's legacy is to kill it with a tasteless, artless, heartless spectacular where you can "be a 365 party girl from the comfort of your own home." While The Moment is far from the artless film that Johannes wants to make, it's not the level of art that Charli makes. Perhaps it is a fitting end: brat goes out not with a bang, but with a shrug.
Films about artists struggling to stay afloat while riding a wave their art has unintentionally created are a big trend at Sundance this year, with The Moment, The Gallerist, and I Want Your Sex all exploring it and all featuring Charli XCX. Unfortunately, The Moment is the weakest of those movies.
The Moment also stars Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, and features cameos from Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott as themselves.
Out review: 2 out of 5 stars.
