Charli XCX's Brat mockumentary The Moment just premiered at Sundance Film Festival. It stars Charli alongside many familiar faces like Kylie Jenner, Rachel Sennott, Rosanna Arquette, Alexander Skarsgård, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, and Charli's frequent off-screen collaborator A. G. Cook, who also did The Moment's soundtrack — a song from it called "Residue" is out today, and its video features Charli and Jenner. The Aidan Zamiri-directed, A24-released movie centers on Charli in the whirlwind months between Brat and its subsequent world tour; along the way, this alternate reality presents Charli with eyebrow-raising corporate opportunities like endorsing a Brat-themed credit card and making a concert film with Amazon MGM Studios. The reviews are in, and they're certainly mixed.
"You maybe have to be fully on board with the Charli XCX circus to really appreciate what a movie about it is trying to do," The Hollywood Reporter's Richard Lawson wrote. "For the more casual viewer, The Moment is entertaining enough, for a while... As it plods into its second and third acts, The Moment seems at cross purposes with itself. Is this a biting farce about the vacuities of celebrity industry? Or is it an earnest reflection on what it was to live at the center of this good-natured but still highly pressurized mania? Zamiri and Charli ultimately choose the latter pose, which tilts the film into self-serious indulgence."
Writing for TheWrap, Chase Hutchinson agreed: "Don’t expect this to be like This Is Spinal Tap or Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, as it isn’t really about skewering the music industry via more self-contained sketches." (Bummer!) Variety's Owen Gleiberman opined that "The Moment should have pushed further into crackpot satirical extremes... The jokes are understated (a generous way to put it, given that the jokes are so understated you’re barely going to laugh at them)."
Most reviews, at least, have praised Charli's performance, but not all: ScreenRant's Gregory Nussen wrote that "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."
Should be interesting! In The Moment, there's a scene where Charli appears on Colbert — that was supposed to happen in real life this week, but it looks like Charli couldn't make it, possibly due to weather-related travel issues. She did appear on Conan O'Brien's podcast this week. He says he loved The Moment, and you can watch that interview below, along with the trippy "Residue" video.
The Moment arrives in theaters 1/30 via A24.
