‘The Moment’ Review: Charli XCX and A24 Turn Pop Branding into Cinema

The mockumentary is a genre with well-established conventions by now: faux documentaries that typically operate in a comic register, spoofing the habits and formal language of the classical documentary. That’s the parodic tone The Moment initially aims for, following British pop singer Charli XCX as she and her team attempt to ride the wave sparked by her 2024 album Brat, which became iconic—arguably more for its apple-green cover, typography, and its takeover of that summer as an internet meme than for any individual song.

In its own way, The Moment tries to extend that momentum with a similarly self-aware, ironic posture, shaping itself as a faux documentary that toys with genre conventions while barely concealing that it is, at heart, another piece of the artist’s marketing machinery. Though this is never entirely hidden, the film—directed by Aidan Zamiri and shot by the superb Sean Price Williams—gradually abandons its parody façade to reveal what it really is: a blend of documentary and fiction about the “suffering,” tension, anxiety, and nerves that accompany sudden fame. Beneath the hipster patina supplied by A24—in the styling, title cards, credits, and vaguely “not for kids” tone—The Moment proves not so different from other autobiographical films about the dilemmas and neuroses of pop stardom.

Charli plays herself at a point when Brat is beginning to wind down its cycle and Atlantic Records is eager to keep extracting value from it. The head of the label—played by Rosanna Arquette, the first recognizable face to tip viewers off that this isn’t a real documentary—meets with the team of celebrated video artist Johannes (Alexander Skarsgard) to commission a film built around the new tour. Johannes is a successful director with his own aesthetic convictions, but neither Charli nor her team are thrilled about an outsider meddling in a visual identity they’ve carefully developed and refined over time. The preparations for shooting that concert film form the movie’s central narrative spine.

At the same time, The Moment follows the singer’s daily routine, her interactions with her entourage, and especially the commercial deals with companies hoping to access a younger, more style-conscious audience through her. Chief among them is a credit card branded with the Brat aesthetic, explicitly targeted at a young, queer demographic. For much of its first half, the film sustains an ironic, teasing tone—very much in the tradition of This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s classic mock-rock documentary, which managed to be both absurd and oddly realistic at the same time.

But once the tour—and the film about the tour—hits a crisis due to creative clashes between Johannes and Charli’s camp, The Moment sheds much of its humor and turns into a self-pitying fiction about the crushing pressures of mass success. From there, the movie steadily loses its sharpness and lightness, piling up therapeutic clichés about fame and emotional burnout. A late twist—best left unspoiled—adds a slightly riskier note, yet knowing that all the corporations featured have willingly signed on to the joke makes the film’s corporate satire feel soft and ultimately toothless.

With cameo appearances by figures like Kylie Jenner, Rachel Sennott, and Stephen Colbert—all playing exaggerated versions of themselves—The Moment works best when it maintains distance from its subject and injects humor into the “problem.” Skarsgård’s pompous filmmaker is particularly effective in that regard, and his silent, intense assistant emerges as the film’s strongest character. Early on, the same can be said of Charli, her manager (comedian Jamie Demetriou), and Arquette. But gradually the irony recedes, leaving behind a fictional drama in which the artist mingles with a cast of actors all playing along in A24’s preferred mode of promotion—that is, transforming a purely commercial venture into an “aesthetic” concept. The Moment is branding disguised as auteur cinema.