The Moment Review

Fame, Pressure, and the Cost of The Moment

By: Marc Kozak

The Moment

Fame, Pressure, and the Cost of The Moment

By: Marc Kozak

Back in the punk scene of the 90s and early 2000s, there was always a conversation to be had amongst fans about the notion of “selling out.” As the genre flirted with the mainstream and poppier bands like Blink 182 and New Found Glory were suddenly selling millions of records, some found it hard to stomach the fact that more and more bands were choosing to embrace the same establishment that their music seemed designed to reject. I remember reading countless comments on music message boards that lamented the “demise” of each new band that the major labels signed, as band and label alike chased the money that came from the popularity of a genre that would fade back into the underground a short time later.

Music has changed so much since then that only the very top one percent of artists even need to worry about such things anymore. There are far fewer labels, far less money to be made, and a lot less willingness to take any kind of risk in promoting styles that stray too far from the pop norm. Still, for artists that are fortunate enough to go through a “moment” where they are embraced by the masses, it is doubtless a surreal experience to have millions of people following your every move on social media. And with that level of attention on you, corporations are inevitably going to come knocking, as there’s money to be made from each sponsored promotion or television appearance. It’s all just “part of the game,” isn’t it?

Charli XCX is a British pop star going through quite an extended moment, with a string of successful hits stretching over more than a decade. The release of her sixth studio album, Brat (2024), launched her into global mega-stardom, spawning a cultural phenomenon called “Brat Summer” that became so socially pervasive that it even influenced the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It was a meme, a vibe, a fun period of time that took all of the self-indulgence and anxiety of our current times and turned it into an acceptance and celebration of just being messy and alive.

" It's that tension that creates the movie’s most interesting moments – the expectations and daydreams of fame that many of us have, clashing with what really happens when you get what you think you want. "

It can be easy to forget that at the center of this media tornado is a real, actual human being – a 33-year-old, self-proclaimed “half-Indian girl with frizzy hair.” The Moment is not only a humorous satire of many of the ridiculous corporate games Charli lived through during the Brat era, but also an attempt to reckon with the incredible pressures that come with being thrust into a worldwide spotlight. Directed by Aidan Zamiri and conceived of by Charli herself, The Moment is a mockumentary that is surely based on many true things, but also poses the fictional scenario: what if Charli snapped under the pressure and sold out?

The result is a fairly clever but often listless sendup of buffoonish press managers, clueless executives, and competing egos, all easy targets that just don’t get it, trying to turn our hero into something that she’s not. Her crew consists of fairly cliched characters you would expect to find in a movie like this, including a comically inept manager (Jamie Demetriou), assistants that are just happy to be there for the clout (Trew Mullen and Isaac Powell), a power-hungry record exec (Rosanna Arquette), and a record label guy who is just trying to take credit for everything (Rish Shah). Run-ins with other famous folks (Rachel Sennott and Kylie Jenner, cameoing as themselves) are just everyday occurrences in this line of work, and all parties are game enough to poke fun at themselves as just more smiling faces in Charli’s orbit.

The only one who seems to care about Charli’s artistic integrity is her creative lead, Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates), Charli’s long-time friend who must constantly fend off stupid ideas from not only the label execs, but from Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård), an absurdly pompous director brought in by the label (and Amazon) to film a concert film documentary about the world tour. Celeste is constantly having her moves second-guessed, and finds it harder and harder to get Charli’s attention and support as Charli starts to crack under the pressure. When Charli decides to go on an unexpected beach retreat to get her mind right, Johannes slowly seizes control and starts to turn the tour into a sanitized, very un-Brat production designed to appeal to families and young children.

All of this is amusing instead of funny, in the way that it is certainly true but not exactly revelatory that companies would try and create a promotional tour credit card targeted towards Charli’s queer fans. The jokes are well observed but kind of stale; Skarsgård’s scenes work the best because he’s the only one being weird enough to really sell how truly absurd this world can be.

Charli is compellingly aloof in the movie’s opening scenes, effortlessly cool and the center of every room she walks into. Her performance gets a bit lost as she is forced to react to the avalanche of demands that come her way, but she really sells the quieter scenes where she is able to escape for precious, brief moments of solitude, vulnerable and often very alone even when she is rarely far from a crowd. It’s hard not to empathize with Charli as she struggles to maintain her humanity while caught up in a machine out of her control, even if, yes, she is rich and successful in ways that most of us will only be able to dream of. It's that tension that creates the movie’s most interesting moments – the expectations and daydreams of fame that many of us have, clashing with what really happens when you get what you think you want.

Unfortunately, The Moment seems content to spend precious little time with these heady thoughts before rocketing on to the next thing, petering out into an ending that reveals little. This is a popstar showcase, after all, and as someone points out, these are songs about doing cocaine. Zamiri attempts to match that energy by peppering scene transitions with strobe effects, going for a nightclub-inspired visual style that is about as exhausting as an actual nightclub.

The Moment does a solid job of capturing today’s world of celebrity culture and social media, and as such, will likely put off those who are admittedly too old (like myself) or just not interested. For those that are, you’ll likely be more in tune with gags and references that will go right over the heads of people not completely invested. Still, interesting ideas swirl around the surface but don’t really go anywhere. It’s not funny enough to totally work as a comedy, and not committed enough to work as an effective piece of dramatic self-introspection. It is a vibe, an aesthetic, a (insert social media lingo here), but sadly not much more than that.