Charli XCX's 'Brat' movie marks a significant moment in cinematic history: the death of the mockumentary. Once a fresh and innovative narrative style, the mockumentary has now become a tired and overused trope, much like the formulaic films it once aimed to satirize. This decline is a sad state of affairs, as the mockumentary format once offered a brilliant and unique way to bring verisimilitude to outlandish characters, much like Christopher Guest's masterpieces, 'Waiting for Guffman', 'Best in Show', and 'A Mighty Wind'.
The mockumentary's stagnation mirrors the creative decline of the documentary itself, where celebrity-oriented projects now feel more like legacy-building exercises than anything else. 'The Moment', starring Charli XCX, fails to capture the essence of her sixth album, 'Brat', and instead strains to land jokes out of her identity crisis. It superficially resembles behind-the-scenes docs, but its satire feels meandering and toothless. A good mockumentary should skewer its subjects, but 'The Moment' saves its sharpest barbs for a pompous, corporate-brained director, played by Alexander Skarsgård.
In this era of overly sycophantic celeb docs, 'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins' should be just the thing to skewer them. However, it never credibly convinces us we are watching the fruits of its filmmaking; it's too phony. The show, rooted in quippy one-liners, clashes with its aspirations towards mockumentary-style verisimilitude. More dismayingly, the American right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh debased the genre with his sub-Borat DEI takedown, 'Am I Racist?', which is more interested in validating viewers' beliefs than offering anything new.
If there is any hope for the mockumentary, it's embodied by small, scrappy projects like 'Rap World' and 'Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie'. These films use mockumentary flourishes and deliberately amateurish screen presences to shore up viewer investment in the veracity of fictitious bands and their misadventures. They remind us that the mockumentary is not dead; it just desperately needs some new blood.
