{"id":1704910,"date":"2026-01-30T13:37:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T10:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1704910"},"modified":"2026-01-30T13:37:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T10:37:50","slug":"charli-xcxs-the-moment-review-the-pop-music-satire-this-era-deserves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1704910","title":{"rendered":"Charli XCX\u2019s The Moment Review: The Pop Music Satire This Era Deserves"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Charli XCX\u2019s The Moment<\/em> Review: The Pop Music Satire This Era Deserves<\/h1>\n
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The singer gamely plays herself in an A24 reality-dramedy satirizing the enshittification of the modern pop star.<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Anna Gaca<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Graphic by Chris Panicker; Photos courtesy of A24<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Remember, in 2022, when Crash<\/em> was coming out, and Charli XCX implied Atlantic was somehow forcing her to make TikToks? This set off a mini panic at the time, but I think she was playing us. The Moment<\/em> is that idea\u2014the meta-level story of the pop star who becomes a casualty of the pop machine\u2014with the budget of someone who convinced A24 to let her star in a BRAT<\/em> movie.<\/p>\n

The Moment<\/em> lands between a celebrity thriller, reality television, and a pop concert documentary that\u2019s headed off the rails. The film is fictional but its premise isn\u2019t: In 2024, Charli XCX (played by Charli XCX) is a famous pop star and her new album, BRAT,<\/em> is a global sensation. She\u2019s guesting on Colbert<\/em>, tour begins in weeks, and everyone\u2014brands, fans, her label\u2014wants a piece. Now that she\u2019s more famous than ever, she\u2019s responsible for keeping this big money train rolling. The characters in The Moment<\/em> are working on a BRAT<\/em> concert film (sponsored by Amazon, we\u2019re told); the movie we\u2019re watching is the drama of their creative differences.<\/p>\n

Right away, we\u2019re in Charli\u2019s entourage, alongside her manager (Jamie Demetriou) trying to shield her from problems, the label exec (Rosanna Arquette) trying to fulfill the Amazon deal, and the stage manager (Hailey Benton Gates in the best supporting performance) trying to keep her creative vision intact. The first half of The Moment<\/em> often reminded me of work\u2014of my actual job at Pitchfork, including Charli\u2019s fake \u201cWhat\u2019s in My Bag?\u201d shoot for British Vogue<\/em>, the earnest pleas of her social media coordinator (\u201cIt\u2019s just one post!\u201d), the label\u2019s upscale corporate headquarters, the way record execs instantly recognize their own and congeal into a schmooze.<\/p>\n

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In one of her first major acting roles, Charli is best when she\u2019s being, what else, a brat, but also a shitty boss: playing her staff off each other, absenting herself from any real decision-making, and evacuating in the Escalade. And she\u2019s nowhere near as hateable as Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd\u2019s odious Johannes, the Amazon-approved concert doc director. He\u2019s almost too one-note: painfully square and straight, tasteless and pushy. He talks over women and he thinks Coldplay are cutting-edge\u2014he\u2019s totally irredeemable and permanently in charge.<\/p>\n

The Moment<\/em> is one-third mockumentary and, like, two-thirds reality TV. The characters perceive the camera, get annoyed when they\u2019d prefer privacy, and never let go of their iPhones. Someone\u2019s phone is always vibrating, a gimmick that often strikes me as contrived in a movie-movie but feels totally normalized in a reality-movie like The Moment<\/em>. A.G. Cook\u2019s score lights up for extra-diegetic dance sequences and other moments when Charli appears alone but otherwise lurks in the background. Even the establishing shots start to evoke those time-lapse interstitials on reality shows.<\/p>\n

Phenomenologically you want to ask, Who is shooting this film?<\/em> It\u2019s a question The Moment<\/em> never answers. The movie is \u201cbased on an original idea by Charli XCX\u201d (she sold 1,500 T-shirts that say so) and the debut feature from Aidan Zamiri, director of Charli\u2019s music videos for \u201cGuess\u201d and \u201c360,\u201d as well as a surreal ad called \u201cTimoth\u00e9e Chalomet for Cash App.\u201d The line between reality and fiction is super thin\u2014The Moment<\/em>\u2019s primary subplot involves Charli shilling a lime-green credit card targeted at queer Zoomers (also reminiscent of Daylight, the disastrous LGBTQ+ banking startup) because she\u2019s basically saying yes to anything at this point. As soon as they mention \u201cBRAT<\/em> credit card,\u201d you know the backlash is coming.<\/p>\n

But the comedic pacing could be a little tighter because sometimes, having seen the BRAT<\/em> tour twice, I wondered if I wouldn\u2019t rather be watching Charli\u2019s actual<\/em> concert film, and not the tacky one Johannes is making. Her live performance sequences are as electric on camera as in real life. Don\u2019t expect to hear much BRAT<\/em> music, though, because The Moment<\/em> is not a movie about a concert film, it\u2019s a film satirizing the social logic and financial incentives that structure the major-label video-content pipeline. That\u2019s too bad because the music\u2019s great. Johannes, you\u2019ll notice, never talks about any of the music at all.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of A24<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Moment<\/em> gives this quote to Benton Gates\u2019 character, but the real Charli XCX is clearly determined not to make another \u201crepetitive\u201d pop star concert doc. The film she\u2019s in is like a darker, younger-millennial update on the Lonely Island\u2019s 2016 classic Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,<\/em> with a dose of the multimedia metaparody in Alex Ross Perry\u2019s Pavement film Pavements<\/em> and an instinct for online that\u2019s distinctly Charli. Popstar<\/em>\u2019s Conner4Real offended his queer fanbase simply by releasing a \u201cno homo\u201d gay-rights song (a moment to remember Rita Ora\u2019s \u201cGirls,\u201d anyone?) but The Moment<\/em> evolves the controversy to account for fintech, sponcon, scamming, exclusive presales for Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders, and a pervasive atmosphere of chaos and fear. It\u2019s 2026 to the hilt. Zamiri doesn\u2019t really bother filming fans rushing Charli\u2019s car or whatever\u2014this has been the quintessential mock-pop-doc scene since A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/em> but these days the fans rush you online.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also clear The Moment<\/em> is a debut: Something about its nightmarish blend of reality and \u201creality\u201d doesn\u2019t quite gel completely, and the for-real brand deals (Beats, Skims, Aperol Spritz) would be distracting even if they weren\u2019t RGB strobing in a way that kept giving me flashbacks to Bruce LaBruce\u2019s The Visitor<\/em>. But it\u2019s a smarter movie than it looks and a lot more ambitious than most pop \u201cdocumentaries.\u201d Seriously, what have we been doing without a female pop star satire? Like Popstar<\/em> and Pavements<\/em>, The Moment<\/em> takes aim at a whole infrastructure of music and celebrity. It\u2019s at least as effective at capturing a particular ethos and, OK, moment<\/em> of pop culture and, unlike the stars of those movies, Charli serves looks. (Not sure about this one, but mostly, looks.) It\u2019s gonna be a cult<\/del> club classic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: http:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/the-moment-charli-xcx-movie-review\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columns Charli XCX\u2019s The Moment Review: The Pop Music Satire This Era Deserves The singer gamely plays herself in an A24 reality-dramedy satirizing the enshittification of the modern pop star. By Anna Gaca January 30, 2026 Graphic by Chris Panicker; Photos courtesy of A24 Remember, in 2022, when Crash was coming out, and Charli XCX […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1704911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,54],"class_list":["post-1704910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1704910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1704911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1704910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1704910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1704910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}