In A24’s latest feature film starring Charli XCX, the pop star asks herself how long she should cling to the highs of success before they start to feel stale.
When BRAT dropped in 2024, a brand-new wave of XCX fans emerged. She found herself catapulted into a whole new level of stardom, pushing her way into a sea of cultural saturation she never saw coming.
What used to feel niche, ironic, and self-aware suddenly became mainstream. BRAT quickly shot up to a career high before becoming a creative pressure point for Charli.
And then the inevitable question struck: what do you do when “the moment” finally arrives?
Make a mockumentary about yourself, featuring yourself, of course.
The Moment is a mock documentary directed by Aidan Zamiri that follows Charli XCX as she gets ready for her BRAT Tour, documenting the creative and emotional complexities that arise while staging the show.
Loads of music artists seem to crash and burn after an album drops, stuck in this kind of never-ending cycle of putting out music and dealing with fan expectations that just keep getting higher and higher.
There’s an unspoken pressure to immediately follow success with something bigger, louder, and more definitive. But as Hailey Benton Gates tells Charli in the film, “You’re not going to die after an album cycle.”
Is it necessary to follow up an award-winning album with a concert film? The idea itself feels flawed, bordering on overexposure. And yet, The Moment is far more interesting than it has any right to be.
Seeing a fictionalized, exaggerated version of Charli on screen offers a glimpse into the interior life of an artist navigating success in real time. Wanting to perform on your own terms, drawing from personal experience, while under the constant surveillance of a PR team and rolling cameras, is no easy task.
And yet, Charli persists.
But that persistence doesn’t quite translate to comedy, unfortunately.
Apart from a standout scene from Rachel Sennott and the odd bit of silliness from Alexander Skarsgård, one of the main things that’s lacking is that the film just isn’t all that funny.
I mean, there are some great one-liners here and there, that bit with the “gay credit card” is pure gold, and Fantano’s cameo even managed to get a laugh out of me.
Overall, the comedy feels a bit half-hearted, like the film is more interested in observing this moment of success than in really cutting loose and satirizing it properly.
