90
Metascore
7 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Slant MagazineSlant MagazineIt is Chaplin’s great elegy to the lost art of music-hall pantomime and, for that matter, the soon-to-be lost art of silent-film comedy.
- 100Time OutKeith UhlichTime OutKeith UhlichThere’s an edge to The Circus that suggests a man gazing deep into the void, laughing at the darkness and urging us to do the same.
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertCharlie Chaplin was a perfectionist in his films and a calamity in his private life. These two traits clashed as he was making The Circus, one of his funniest films and certainly the most troubled.
- 90SalonAndrew O'HehirSalonAndrew O'HehirMixing sweetness, darkness, violence and delirious gags, this 1928 must-see showcases film's greatest comic.
- 88LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenLarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMostly the movie registers as a comedy flag being planted, a claim being made. Anything your average clown could do, Chaplin could do better.
- There are passages in The Circus that are undoubtedly too long and others that are too extravagant for even this blend of humor. But Chaplin's unfailing imagination helps even when the sequence is obviously slipping from grace.