Charli XCX’s The Moment is just fine – and that’s its biggest problem

The Moment is a chaotic, amusing and authentic-seeming peek inside the ridiculousness of showbusiness and how it enveloped Charli XCX after the success of her era-defining album Brat in 2024.

Or it’s certainly how it felt to the singer-songwriter herself, who has decided to commemorate the madness with a fun mockumentary as part of her multi-pronged, multi-movie assault on Hollywood in 2026.

She’s also made sure to enlist a choice selection of buzzy celeb cameos too, from Kylie Jenner to Julia Fox and Rachel Sennott, who ably support the close-to-reality narrative.

I was not convinced by her acting in recent film debut 100 Nights of Hero, a queer historical fantasy where she had a small role as one of three sisters at the centre of a fable.

However, she has no problem taking centre stage comfortably for The Moment, with charisma firmly in place, as well as an admirable readiness to poke fun of herself which is essential to making the whole thing work.

The Moment begins at full speed with her hit song 365 blaring out, flashing strobe lighting and Charli writhing around on the floor for a shoot before we are plunged into her life behind the scenes.

Directed by frequent collaborator Aidan Zamiri, the film delights in capturing the havoc surrounding an artist at the peak of their popular powers, when everything suddenly becomes far more frantic and needlessly complicated.

She’s rehearsing for an arena tour and the associated concert film Atlantic Records is insisting upon to keep ‘Brat summer’ going, and yet her assistant is suggesting she also take a freebie resort stay in Ibiza while Charli’s desperately dodging germs from her potentially infectious yet rather relaxed makeup artist.

Jamie Demetriou holds things together in an excellently awkward performance as Charli’s permanently harassed and ineffectual tour manager who struggles to assert himself, same as the boys on her team who thought they ‘smashed’ a meeting where Rosanna Arquette’s brittle label exec Tammy in fact completely steamrolled them.

Amid some entertaining chaos including a partnership on a ‘Brat green’ credit card for young queer people – ‘How do you know, do they have to prove it?’ Charli sensibly asks in one question that leaves her team stumped – to a Vogue ‘What’s in my bag?’ interview that must be done on stilts after the singer is sewn into her dress and therefore cannot sit, the concert film manages to press on throughout.

And this is despite anyone actually being happy with the concept except Tammy and the inexplicably popular director Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård) who she brings onboard.

Johannes seems to understand Charli as much as the driver who mixed her up with Charlie Puth and was most excited when he thought her music might be similar to Leona Lewis’s.

He’s ragingly mainstream and yet bafflingly well connected (name-dropping the likes of ‘Abel’ and ‘Demi’) while promising Charli – as he side-eyes the expletives emblazoned on the stage’s screens – that any changes he suggests are ‘not a compromise but an opportunity’.

Skarsgård isn’t stretched in this role but at least seems to have fun playing against type as someone who is fundamentally uncool. His idea of a mic-drop idea: ‘Have you heard of light-up wristbands?’

Kylie Jenner is an unexpected highlight too, bumping into Charli and lightly admonishing her for keeping the director so busy that he can’t work on a pillow advert with her.

As Charli worries about flogging Brat to death, Kylie assures her that when everyone is sick of you is exactly when you should ‘go even harder’.

Their beautifully uncomfortable encounter is one of the funniest, realest scenes of The Moment, which prides itself on including excruciating details when it can.

But despite the film proving an entertaining distraction most of the time, I’m not entirely sure who it is for other than Charli’s most avid fans, or what it offers other than a gently amusing time. I wrote down the funniest gags but they’re already fading from memory.

It’s certainly a definitive way of announcing that the Brat era is over though – but we already knew that thanks to her newly released Wuthering Heights soundtrack album for Emerald Fennell’s movie. I didn’t really need Charli to kill Brat onscreen to know that it’s dead.

The Moment is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 20.

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