Circuit

This budget-conscious drama, set amid the throbbing, drug-fueled subculture of West Hollywood and its traveling “circuit” parties, is awfully well-intentioned and earnest. Writer-director Shafer (the star and subject of 1995's mock-doc Man of the Year, about his reign as a Playgirl centerfold) has tried -- and tried hard -- to create a gritty, edgy cautionary tale for fast-living gay club kids. Sadly, the result may be closer to a Showgirls for the same audience: an ostensibly sexy but often silly exposé with an eye-candy cast gleaned from daytime television, a cliché-ridden story, and an overheated dramatic pitch. Chiseled, clean-cut Illinois police officer John (Wade-Drahos) is the stereotypical small-town boy gone native in the big city (he all but tosses his beret in the air outside the TomKat Theater). He meets slick hustler Hector (Khabbazi, of TV's Sunset Beach) at a party in the hills, and before you can say “road to ruin,” the pair is hoovering up Ketamine and putting on Great Lash with abandon. Meanwhile, HIV-positive exotic dancer Bobby Rocks (Lekakis, a circuit icon) shoots performance drugs in his penis and a sleazy straight party promoter (Katt -- that's right, the “Greatest American Hero”) manipulates his customers, all before the camera of an aspiring documentarian (Kucan). Can a friend from John's past (perky Warren) pull him back from the edge before it's too late? Or can he be redeemed by the love of a good man (Green)? To be sure, the circuit subculture is compelling material, and Shafer presents it authentically enough, making the point that this “Super Bowl for gay men” has become a crucible of exploitation, unsafe sex, and dangerous party drugs. Unfortunately the movie is thinly conceived and executed, awash in obvious dramatic cues, fast-motion montages, glow sticks, boogie fog, softcore sex, and shorthanded characterizations. Katt's character tends toward skulking villainy (he spends much of the film poolside, in a kimono, if that tells you anything), while the circuit performers literally wear angel wings. Shafer has more of an eye for visuals than a feel for dramatics, and some of the younger actors seem out to sea in the script's Big Moments. (Warren, as Grace to Wade-Drahos' Will, is likable and spunky, but a confrontation scene between the two is badly mishandled.) Still, there are bright spots: Allen is on hand to class things up, and wacky guys like Bruce Vilanch and Jim J. Bullock turn up in small roles. It's too bad Shafer spent his budget making a fiction feature instead of just shooting a documentary about the scene. So much of the film is melodramatic kitsch, but there's still a movie in here.