The Moment: Charli xcx mockumentary is not as brat as it could’ve been

Almost two years since Charli xcx declared brat to be the attitude de jour, do we still yet know what it was?

Was it just about being messy? And unrepentant, brash and defiant? Brat could be whatever you wanted it to be, as long as it was loose. To contain and define brat within strict parameters is not very brat.

The thing about a mood is that it is, to a degree, ineffable. It’s like porn, you know it when you see it.

It never seemed like Charli xcx had philosophical questions about what brat was, she just lived it.

Or did she?

Charli xcx ponders exactly this in the mockumentary The Moment, a behind-the-scenes piss-take in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap, but without that film’s lacerating delights.

The Moment is often entertaining, especially if you appreciate awkward British humour derived from watching characters talk at cross-purposes.

But it lacks verve, and it needs a much tighter edit. Scenes run for too long and lag at the wrong moments – if the timing was right, we’d call it “letting it breathe” – while the movie as a whole could’ve easily lost 15 minutes.

In the fictional universe of The Moment, it’s the end of brat summer and Charli is about to embark on a tour. She’s contending with her continued relevance and what brat is now that summer is technically over, but brat is not.

There are two weeks until the tour starts and she’s set up in a warehouse rehearsal space in Dagenham on the outskirts of London.

She and her creative director Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates) is bedding in a concept in which the concert will feel like being at a nightclub, embodying the messy spirit of brat.

But Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgard), a concert video director sent by the record company, has very different ideas. His guiding principle is accessibility and likeability, and he wants Charli to be a pop princess that no grandparent could ever object to – soften the slime green, be all smiles, there’s definitely no references to cocaine, literal or metaphorical.

Then there’s the collaboration with a failing bank to launch a brat-themed credit card targeted at queer young people, a disaster in the making.

Between her weak-willed manager Tim (Jamie Demetrious), a ball-breaking record company exec (Rosanna Arquette) and Johannes’ continued, passive-aggressive demands, Charli runs off to Ibiza in the middle of the chaos.

What it does is highlight the limitations of living the brat life – especially when people are actually looking to you for leadership and you don’t have the capacity to provide it.

When it matters, the fictional Charli is completely out of her depth as a boss. She’s quick to snap, flaky when she needs to be decisive, non-confrontational which only allows issues to spiral, and abandons the only person who cares about the work.

The Moment is full of moments, careering towards an inevitable breakdown, but it doesn’t really have that much to say about celebrity culture or what it’s like to have created an entire cultural trend by sheer force of personality.

While it’s certainly more palatable than all the milquetoast artist-approved so-called music documentaries that are piling up on streaming servers, The Moment is little more than a piece of light entertainment.

There are some fun vignettes and characters, especially Skarsgard as Johannes, who really owns every scene that he’s even on the peripheral of, but it also has the unfortunate effect of putting Charli xcx against a professional actor.

Charli xcx is at-times out of depth as an actor, because she isn’t one, struggling to really sell the enveloping panic overwhelming her dramatised self. It feels as if she’s still holding back, perhaps uncomfortable with painting herself as truly brat.

That is The Moment’s issue as a whole, that it’s just doesn’t go far enough. If you’re going for mockumentary, really lean into how ridiculous the whole fame factory is.

There should be more scenes such as the one where actor Rachel Sennott, playing a version of herself, right before she inhales a line of cocaine, tells the camera crew to delete what’s coming next.

But it tries to marry a more artful, naturalistic indie photography style with something that should’ve been quite arch. It doesn’t quite work.

Instead of embracing the whole brat, The Moment pulls its punches.

Rating: 2.5/5

The Moment is in cinemas on Thursday, March 5