The Moment proclaims to be bold, frenetic, and maybe even subversive. Alas, the film fails to learn the lesson that its star, Charli XCX, seems to know so well. You can’t announce what you are. You just have to be it and hope people get it. The film is not half so self-assured.

Director Aidan Zamiri co-wrote the script with Bertie Brandes, basing it on an idea Charli XCX herself pitched. Together, the trio created a mockumentary that explores the mega-success of Charli’s 2024 album Brat and the pressure to make “brat summer” last forever. A handful of stars from Rachel Sennott to Kylie Jenner pop up to play fictionalized versions of themselves while Rosanna Arquette and Alexander Skarsgård round out the cast as the corporate yang to Charli’s creative yin.

Even among such stacked talents, Charli XCX holds her own fairly well. Yes, she’s playing a version of herself. Still, she needs to be able to sell us on the emotions of the moment (no pun intended). Mostly, she pulls that off. She’s best when confronted (and confounded) by intense corporate needling. In one scene, a buttoned-up lawyer accosts her for verbal consent to move forward with a branding deal. A flustered Charli replies with a perky, “Yes!” only to receive a blank stare from the lawyer. It’s a beat before she realizes she needs to literally say, “I consent.” Everyone wants something from her. It’s her job to give ot to them. God forbid she doesn’t follow a script she’s never received to a T.

But when Charli, the character, goes from committed to her vision of the Brat tour to swayed by the promise of extending this particular moment in perpetuity, the evolution never feels earned. We bounce from one emotion to the next. They may all make sense on paper, but on screen, it feels less like a journey than a series of checkboxes.

The Moment also can’t decide whether it wants to be grounded or absurdist. So, it splits the difference, to the detriment of the whole. There are playful, over-the-top winks reminiscent of Spice World or Josie and the Pussycats, but The Moment refuses to commit to the bit even half as hard. That not only leaves some scenes falling flat, but muddles aspects of the film that work well.

Cheeky bits of advertising for bumble & bumble and Starface slipped in between electric strobe lights feel like a joke on consumerism. At least they do until you clock how the prominence of real product placement. You can’t satirize advertising while also just doing advertising. It’s as if Zamiri is afraid to let the film be less grounded without realizing it’s the only way you can sell the joke and not just the product itself.

Thankfully, The Moment sticks the landing with a final scene that features Charli at her most honest and vulnerable. It’s what the whole film aspires to be and is a truly beautiful bit of filmmaking that makes it a hell of a lot easier to forgive much of what precedes it.

Ultimately, it’s going to be Charli XCX fans that are going to get the most bang for their buck out of The Moment. For the rest of us, it’s a halfway decent distraction from the horrors at best and a self-important air bubble at worst. Where you’ll land depends on how much you can connect with the film’s vision through its own insecurity.

The Moment struts across cineplex screens now.

The Moment Trailer: