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This is a hackneyed beast of a movie, ineffectual but self-important and melodramatically sulky, fascinated with what is ultimately its own hysteric boredom. And we are rewarded with what must have seemed a sophisticated resolution, but is in actuality a negative and hopeless ending. If this was a smarter movie, I would have been down. I don't need gaylesbi propaganda. But it's not (propaganda or smart). It doesn't even deserve to be in the oftimes horrific canon of lesbian film. I don't know why this gets shown at queer film festivals. I don't know why this gets viewed at all. And I was the kind of kid who would watch anything for just a smidgen of queer content. I owned Longtime Companion, for god's sake. I was there the first day Poison Ivy came out, entranced by the weak flicker of lesbian luv between Drew Barrymore and Sara Gilbert. That movie's no more sophisticated than this one, and in reality, it's no less harmful, but I'd recommend Poison Ivy over Lost and Delirious any day. But we've got the internet now, we've got a gay guy in Mean Girls, we've got so many more options coming from both Hollywood and the ever-growing beyond. So maybe we don't have to troll the back aisles of the video store anymore. So maybe we don't have to watch quite as many horrible "lesbian" films.

If you've seen any other sort of halfway decent crime movie, your patience might be put to the test by "Circus". If you are more than halfway sober or awake, its little derivative winks of 'intelligence' might actually appear half-assed and grating. I'm a fan of both John Hannah and Eddie Izzard, but neither actor can rescue this made-for-TV-grade formulaic crap-pile. And the 'intelligent' bit of that formula is the one that most grates on me: when the films throws out references to Tarantino, musical theatre, The Sweet Smell of Success, etc.(naming a character Elmo Somerset? Good lord), it's insulting. And when the twists are revealed, I hardly feel that the makers of Circus are knowing masterminds. They blindly stumbled through this movie, hoping that they could pull this foolish scam of a movie off.