Writer-director Dirk Shafer's Circuit takes place in the gay party scene of Los Angeles, where buff young men gather for drug-fueled, disco-soaked bacchanals, getting off on the freedom of expressing their sexuality. The film stars Jonathan Wade-Drahos as an ex-cop from the heartland, driven from his job by his superiors, one of whom actually dresses him down by warning, "This is a small, conservative town." Wade-Drahos moves to L.A. at the urging of his cousin (Daniel Kucan), who hangs around the periphery of "the circuit" under the auspices of making a documentary film. Wade-Drahos is initially overwhelmed by the sheer volume of attractive, willing young men that he meets, but once he befriends veteran hustler Andre Khabbazi, he becomes increasingly entrenched in the party life, and starts shooting steroids and snorting Special K in order to keep up. ("Maybe my scene is changing," he explains to an old friend from home.) Shafer and co-writer Gregory Hinton initially planned for Circuit to have the edge of Boogie Nights and Trainspotting, but they softened their indictment of "circuit boys" in deference to their many friends who transition successfully from orgiastic weekends to the workaday world. Nevertheless, Circuit gets pretty bleak, with Wade-Drahos and Khabbazi dragging each other into a desperate spiral of self-improvement and self-medication. Shafer injects visual pizzazz through musical interludes replete with editing tricks and fancy camerawork; with its sunny look and copious use of color filters, Circuit is as slick and attractive as its cast. But the movie gets away from Shafer—as did his previous film, Man Of The Year, which drew from his real-life experiences as a Playgirl centerfold and massaged reality to make it more like a daytime drama. In Circuit, this melodrama makeover leads to characters that are little more than their assortment of problems, and dialogue that consists of trite self-declarations. (The ex-cop: "I can't make love unless my body's perfect." The hustler: "I don't feel anything." The documentarian: "I'm watching guys die out there.") The plot takes too long to unfold, too, thanks to the time wasted on small roles filled by celebrities Bruce Vilanch, JM J. Bullock, Nancy Allen, and William Katt (doing his best John C. McGinley impression). There's a story to be told about how a lifestyle can be dangerously addictive even as it provides a supportive circle of friends. It's unfortunate that Circuit concludes with footage from Kucan's documentary on the gay nightlife, reminding the audience of the format in which this film should have been made.