Charli XCX's cringe mockumentary doesn't meet 'The Moment' – Review

This movie review is so not brat.

Charli XCX stars as a fictionalized ticking-bomb version of herself in the meta mockumentary “The Moment” (★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Feb. 6) and, at least in one instance, the movie embraces part of the definition of “brat” the British pop singer-songwriter popularized a couple of years ago: It’s a mess. The film aims to be a Gen Z/millennial “This Is Spinal Tap” but with much less clever wit and way more vocal fry.

After “Brat summer” 2024 – when her Grammy-winning “Brat” album, with that slime green cover, took over pop culture – Charli is on top of the world as she preps to launch her first arena-headlining world tour. She’s also a bundle of shredded nerves in need of a vacation. There’s no time for that, because she needs to maintain the massive momentum. Atlantic Records executive Tammy (Rosanna Arquette) has signed up in-demand director Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård) to helm Charli’s Amazon concert film, an important cog to making sure brat is forever.

The problem begins with Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates), Charli’s pal and main creative collaborator. In the early days of tour rehearsal, Johannes shows up and immediately clashes with Celeste, causing more stress for Charli. The singer bolts for Ibiza for a few days, which creates tumult among her posse and extra emotional turmoil for Charli, and she returns from the impromptu holiday to find an overwhelming amount of chaos waiting.

The music movie tries to capture the insanity and inanity of being a modern celebrity. The petulant and stressed Charli overthinks social posts and radio call-outs, and gets thrown into doing a “what’s in my bag?” video for British Vogue and a bank’s brat credit card publicity stunt. And there are moments where “The Moment” finds a few choice nuggets of absurdity: Charli gets in a gigantic lighter prop that spews out fire – which gives vibes of Spinal Tap’s iconic “Stonehenge” bit – and butts heads with an eccentric esthetician (Arielle Dombasle).

But the movie, directed by music-video filmmaker Aidan Zamiri, is a hodgepodge of tones and genres that doesn’t hold together at all. (One stylistic thing it totally nails: flashing lights. This movie loves a flashing light.) One minute, there’s a dark psychological scene; in the next, Charli runs into Kylie Jenner for an awkwardly semi-humorous convo. For the most part, the dramatic parts aren’t serious, the comedy parts aren’t that funny, and somehow this flick’s so busy it comes back around to being boring.

As the famous young woman constantly on the verge of a breakdown, Charli plays a pretty good brat: She sparkles in the satirical bits, where you get a sense of her showmanship and spirit, but spends a lot of the movie partying and brooding. Rachel Sennott enjoyably cameos as a version of herself who’s a Charli frenemy. Skarsgård is sufficiently wacky and off-putting as the irksome Johannes, and Jamie Demetriou does yeoman’s work as Charli’s put-upon manager, Tim, the poor sap tapped to keep Charli on task (and usually fails).

“The Moment” falls short of its ambitious goals of exploring the pressures and anxieties of the contemporary music superstar. And as a vanity project, well, The Weeknd’s pretentious “Hurry Up Tomorrow” looks like a Criterion Collection selection in comparison.

To borrow a line from one of Charli’s entourage: It’s all cringe, babe.