Review by Nicholas Porteous for Mr. Will Wong

The Moment is a messy Mockumentary ostensibly about ‘brat’ and all things under the brat umbrella–although, as a Charli XCX outsider, I walked away feeling like I understood brat less than I did before I saw the movie. In the vein of This is Spinal Tap, we follow the pop icon in the wake of Brat Summer, prepping for her filmed concert, and being led around by a clueless entourage of management and collaborators from one minor fiasco to the next. The Moment faintly itches the premise that fame and virality are impossible to control, and anyone who claims to understand the nature of pop music prosperity is fooling themselves. The hollowness of fame has always been fertile ground for Comedy, but The Moment doesn’t bring much to the party beyond a parade of tongue-tied morons vaguely trying to pitch Charli on ways to extend her time in the spotlight. It’s a hard movie to classify–not for its fusion of genres, but because it doesn’t really do any of those genres successfully. It’s a comedy with almost no laughs, a Music Movie with remarkably few needle drops, and a faux art Doc about a subject who spontaneously abandons her art for most of the runtime.

Charli comes off as an unknowable quantity in her own film. She has virtually no agency, and while she’s a bit exasperated about the runaway train of her stardom, her mild attitude doesn’t move the narrative needle. The one time she’s in control is when she runs off to Ibiza, leaving the planning of her filmed concert to play out without her input. It’s a wildly dull decision that only serves to derail the dramatic engine of the Film, splitting the story between a series of disconnected Ibiza skits and an annoying back-and-forth between Alexander Skarsgård and Hailey Benton Gates. When shit actually hits the fan–far too late in the story–it’s the result of some offscreen happening that is only tangentially related to whatever we’ve been watching. It’s a good thing they didn’t call it The Momentum, creating false expectations for… things happening that connect and play off of each other?

I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Moment, particularly as someone who hasn’t been following Charli XCX –outside of her letterboxd–but I wrongly assumed the Charli XCX movie would feature songs by Charli XCX. The lack of her music is a puzzling bow on a puzzling artifact–a movie about fame that offers no insight beyond “it’s vapid and unwieldy” and virtually no music beyond “Bittersweet Symphony” –yeah, a non-Charli track. Maybe the fans will get something out of this movie that I couldn’t, but unless you deeply identify as “Brat“, don’t give The Moment a second of your time.

VVS Films release THE MOMENT February 6, 2026 in select cities, and nationally February 13, 2026.