"Charli XCX's pop persona is such a delectable blend of sincerity and pastiche that the idea of a mockumentary around her life is a no-brainer. The Moment 's opening salvo, a montage of news reports talking about the runaway success of the singer's 2024 album and the attendant pandemonium of "Brat Summer" coverage, shows the way. The spotlight on Charli is already so crazy that you theoretically only need to push everything a few small degrees to fully enter the realm of parody."
"The Moment, directed by music-video wunderkind Aidan Zamiri, feels like a half-hearted hybrid of a real concert doc and a This Is Spinal Tap-like satire. It's a little too afraid to go too far in either direction, and the end result is pure brand management. It follows Charli as she prepares for the start of her latest tour, all the while dealing with various sponsorships and media demands: a five second radio promo here, a credit card partnership and an absurdly tight outfit there."
"Charlie's record label wants to keep Brat Summer going - why shouldn't this moment last a year or two or more? - and they've struck a deal with Amazon to make a concert documentary, directed by renowned and stupefyingly pretentious filmmaker Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård, making a fine meal of a one-note character), who speaks in New Age truisms and pretends at artistic integrity all the while pushing a bland, corporate-friendly vision of Charli's aesthetic."
The Moment opens with a montage of news reports about the runaway success of Charli XCX's 2024 album and the pandemonium of Brat Summer. The film mixes concert-documentary elements with This Is Spinal Tap-like satire but hesitates to commit to either tone, producing a cautious, brand-management feel. The narrative follows Charli preparing for a tour amid sponsorships, media demands and promotional tie-ins, convincingly conveying chaos and blurred lines between reality and invention. The arrival of pretentious filmmaker Johannes Godwin and an Amazon concert deal introduces backstage conflict over artistic control and corporate-friendly shaping of Charli's aesthetic.
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