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What does it mean to be brat? The generational riddle wrapped in a TikTok quandary has befuddled talking heads and boomers for the last 18 months (which amounts to a couple of epochs in social media years). But the general definition passed down by Charli XCX herself is that it’s “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things, sometimes… It is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile.”
Youth in revolt.
It’s a great ideal, but an even better idea for a marketing gimmick. And that uneasy tension between those aspirations and the general assholishness that comes with commercialism has bedeviled pop music since time in memorial, and seems likely to gnaw at Charli too, as judged by the “brat” credit card laid out for free at every table of the Alamo Drafthouse screening room Tuesday night. Replicas of a literal prop in the movie, they are as empty and devoid of value as the queasy green paint slapped across their faces. They’re a brand intended to sell you something and nothing, which in this case is a movie ironically decrying the commercialization of music, art, rebellion, and the brattishness that Charli XCX espouses.
As an exercise in post-modern irony, the resulting movie of The Moment is bold—or at least it desperately wants to be so. From another perspective, it’s just self-satisfied enough with its metatextual quality to grate. Personally, however, the film largely amounts to a missed opportunity.
There is something always delicious about public figures willing to play themselves as fools, and Charli’s fictionalized version of herself in The Moment is needy, insecure, and just tragic enough to dimly recognize her own vapidity. It doesn’t stop her, though, from letting her label, handlers, and other music industry users in co-opting the “brat summer” of 2024 when the film’s faux-documentary is set. The sycophants turn a movement in the movie into a regular Madison Avenue Ad Men’s Frankenstein Monster, unleashed this time on the Snapchat generation. Yet the movie from writer-director Aidan Zamiri lacks the humor, imagination, or fanged menace to let this creature do anything too mean, or for that matter funny, during its rampage.
A tonal blending of ostensible cringe comedy, slow-burn horror perfectly in line with the film’s own A24 branding, and the uncanny valley of severe navel-gazing, there are intermittent scenes of ruthless schadenfreude in The Moment. This begins with the film having more than a passing resemblance to cult darling mockumentaries like This Is Spinal Tap in the film’s opening.
The time is early summer 2024, and Charli is introduced rocking out in what looks like the ruins of a derelict nightclub. Strobing, chic lights throb over music-video ready imagery and rapid editing, evoking the essence of Charli’s onstage and online persona. This turns out to be a soundstage where the pop star is building the look of her upcoming concert tour, and ground zero for real-life filmmaker Zamiri to do something a little playful. During the opening, the logos of production companies and distributors that made his film possible, including 2AM, Studio365, and A24, flash by in their patented brat-green stylings. Shades of the commodification of Charli’s music—including this movie—are already manifest.
Yet structurally what this self-skewering means proves elusive, as the mockumentary setup of the film turns out to be inexplicably filming the making of another more typical concert film-within-a-film, this one directed by industry veteran and sycophant extraordinaire, Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård). Johannes apparently has a penchant for making the streaming-ready gloss-ups you might associate with a Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber. Confusingly, though, The Moment becomes a documentary about Skarsgård’s attempt to make this even thinner slice of onscreen superficiality. Of course the narrative muddiness of this nesting doll structure wouldn’t matter if the film’s satire of the modern music industry was as sharp or funny as it thinks it is.
Zamiri certainly conjures the anxiety and dread that sustains so many comedy and horror movies this decade. Charli’s steady corruption by the banalities of fame and capitalism come across as a slow-motion car wreck while her handlers seduce her into selling “brat credit cards” to marginalized LGBTQ kids on IG and TikTok. Meanwhile Johannes slowly pushes out Charli’s most protective inner-circle, including BFF creative director Celeste Collins (Hailey Benton Gates), all so he can vibe-shift the upcoming concert tour’s nightclub aesthetic into an insipid paean to self-empowerment, and replace the word cunt on Charli’s concert stage to the more parent-friendly b!tc#. “The song is literally about cocaine,” Celeste protests when told to think of the potential children demographic. “What if the cocaine is a metaphor?!” Johannes suggests, without much rhyme or reason to explain for what.
Sequences like the above have an obvious but effective bite, as do almost all of Skarsgård’s overcaffeinated, strained smiles that appear too acute to not be based on a person or 12 the Swedish actor has met along the way. The film also gets mileage out of other celebrities willing to play themselves, be it I Love LA’s Rachel Sennott as a jelly cokehead needling Charli in a bar’s bathroom, or Kylie Jenner as the superficial ideal for empty fame. The fact Kylie shows up in a bikini and 4K-ready makeup at a spa as the devil on Charli’s shoulder, convincing her to sell her soul to the suits to extend brat summer’s 15 minutes, shows a fair amount of self-awareness and self-deprecation.
Then again, the Jenner-Kardashian brand is a testimonial for fame as an end unto itself, so whether symbolizing supposed perfection, or celebrity-life rot as in The Moment, it all plays the same. For Charli XCX, though, the film is meant to clearly be a cautionary tale of the road taken by so many other pop stars. It seeks to weaponize and mock the whole media cycle of the brat meme, yet like a carefully curated marketing campaign, the film refuses to go in for the most thrilling or provocative kill.
Not nearly funny enough to work as a comedy, or scary enough to be an unnerving thriller, there is the possibility for The Moment to still be a subversive, transgressive satire. The third act—after movie-Charli goes full sellout—indeed flirts with something as triumphantly nihilistic as the ending of Network from 50-odd years ago. Near the end, Johannes, Charli’s record exec overlord (Rosanna Arquette), and a fleet of hangers-on, begin contemplating life without Charli.
Alas, the movie lacks the courage of its convictions. It footsies with doing something truly blunt, honest, or volatile, but by Charli’s own definition, it’s unable to achieve full brat. Or, to use a different music mockumentary’s slang, it fails to take things to 11.
The Moment is in theaters Friday, Feb. 6.
The post The Moment Review: Charli XCX Movie Is Not Nearly as Brat as It Needs to Be appeared first on Den of Geek.
