Charli xcx has killed brat. Or, at least, she’s killed it in the alternate universe of The Moment. With longtime collaborator photographer Aidan Zamiri, director of the “360” and “Guess ft. Billie Eilish,” Charli rehashes the tour’s visuals with a Spice World-esque flair. Unfortunately, the situations that Charli faces are hardly engaging enough to make this a successful experiment with her image. In a fitting finale to the protracted saga of brat, Charli displays comedic chops and a playful exhaustion of the cultural moment that she birthed two years ago, though The Moment far from reinvents the mockumentary.
The Moment, directed by Zamiri, follows Charli as she deals with a particularly challenging few weeks in September 2024: the brat tour is approaching, her label is pushing for a concert film, and she’s doing a questionable “brat” credit card collaboration with (fictional bank) Howard Sterling. As a sort of anti-concert film, it presents a world where the brat tour devolves into complete sellout territory, a label takeover similar to Crash. Charli is caught in the creative power struggle between her longtime collaborator Celeste Moreau Collins (Hailey Benton Gates) and shady Swedish film director Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård). Throughout tour rehearsals and a desperate trip to Ibiza, Charli mulls over one question: Should brat live forever?
Visually, the first half of The Moment regurgitates the violent strobing images that have become associated with the rave context surrounding brat. Title cards detailing the many European locales Charli traverses on her Sisyphean journey of reaching creative satisfaction are pretty much illegible. The film uses aggressive red-green-blue strobing and multiple fonts in a Gaspar Noé-esque choice that generates an excellent aesthetic energy, but is completely impractical if you want the audience to actually read the text onscreen. Hilariously, the latter half of the film creates an alternate universe in which the brat tour has horrible creative direction, including Charli riding a giant prop cigarette, being hoisted in the air wearing an all-green ensemble, and clownish backup dancers. The end product is a not-so-subtle parody of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, but made brat.
An appearance by Kylie Jenner marks the instant that The Moment becomes truly engaging. In a film filled with flashy celebrity cameos to emphasize brat’s reach—Stephen Colbert, Interview magazine editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg, and “360” music video darlings Rachel Sennott and Julia Fox included—Jenner rises above the rest. She appears as a figurehead of mainstream culture, unaffected by the rising Charli hype. Sennott provides a bit of humor early on as she plays into the frivolous, coke-loving LA persona easily projected onto her.
Charli—presented in a fictionalized, heightened state of petulance and distress—benefits from being surrounded by insufferable personalities. Her social media manager, Lloyd Randall (Issac Cole Powell), is the most grating of them all. While Godwin hits certain comedic beats and is a great representation of the out-of-touch mainstream artistic puppetmaster, something Charli has made a name out of fighting, Randall is absolutely dreadful to watch onscreen. He lacks charm, grace, and tact. Although relatively insignificant, the role could have benefited from an actor who pairs well with Charli and reads less as a handsome gay actor fed to the audience as filler. Charli and Gates are the only actors in this film tapping into genuine emotion; Gates’ feelings of betrayal and powerlessness are palpable alongside Charli’s moments of desperation and dread, shining through in an extended monologue by Charli near the end of the film.
Business, inherently, is unsexy and generally uninteresting. Without reaching the perilous heights of a program such as Industry, each scene taking place in the Atlantic Records building drags on too long. Label executive Tammy Pitman (Rosanna Arquette) appears cutthroat and detached, save for certain whimsical moments, like stuffing her face with food at a lunch meeting designed to take down Celeste, giving some semblance of life to otherwise dull sequences. The label is placed in direct opposition to Charli’s individualized creativity to such an extent that makes one wonder how Atlantic agreed to this.
As a film, The Moment relies too heavily on the audience being invested in Charli xcx and her image. If you’re not already the type of person who would sign up for a brat-branded Howard Sterling credit card, this is not the film for you. Director Aidan Zamiri has created the perfect end to Charli’s brat era, but all the film accomplishes is providing a few laughs and new visuals for Charli’s existing “Angels.”