When I tell you, reader, that the new film Stop! That! Train! plays exactly like an extended, slightly better-than-average Acting Challenge on a slightly better-than-average season of RuPaul's Drag Race, some among you will nod sagely, and hie your butts to the theater in boisterous gaggles of girls, gays and theys. (A not-insignificant subset of you may also stop along the way to buy a box of cheap-ass blush wine so you can remove the bag and smuggle it into the theater, and I can't stop you, that's your own business.) Some among you will take that same report under advisement, secure in the knowledge that you'll be fine waiting to stream it in the comfort of your own homes, where you've stashed enough champagne … to fill da Nile! Some among you — let's face it, the younger, hotter, more evolved crowd that prefers your humor to grow organically out of things like characterization, cultural insight and dry wit — will grimace, and resolve to avoid it at all costs.
But the vast majority of you haven't watched enough Drag Race to internalize its every formulaic tic, and thus won't be able to glean any useful information from the comparison, so let me break it down for you.
Stop! That! Train! parodies '70s disaster movies in exactly the way the 1980 film Airplane! did, which is to say: By submitting it to a ceaseless fusillade of broad, sweaty and very dumb jokes, by busting out a parade of game celebrity cameos and by deploying a just-shy-of-legally-actionable number of precisely the same gags.
The only salient difference turns out to be one of sensibility. Where Airplane!'s humor chiefly arose from encasing its jokes in a thick layer of deadpan solemnity (think Leslie Nielsen's Dr. "And don't call me Shirley" Rumack), Stop! That! Train!'s entire schtick is one of arch, winking camp (think Stephen Stucker's Johnny, the hilariously queeny control-room worker who served as resident court jester/chaos gremlin).
So think of it as Airplane! with nothing but the Johnny jokes. In a word: drag.
Which only makes sense, as the film's key roles are filled with queens from RuPaul's Drag Race and those who love them. There's Jujubee and Ginger Minj as DeeDee and Tess, two not-so-fresh-faced "train hostesses" whose low-rent rail service folds, causing them to bluff their way into jobs on a Glamazonian Express luxury bullet train.
They receive a frosty reception from the train's trio of first-class hostesses, Amber (Brooke Lynn Hytes), Allie (Marcia Marcia Marcia, credited here as Marty Lauter) and the ridiculously spelled Ayshleiygh (Symone). Keep an eye out for Latrice Royale, Monét X Change and Angeria Paris VanMicheals while you're at it.
If you're finding yourself concerned that you're eight paragraphs into this review and still don't know what the movie's actually about, just know that you, cookie, are not the target demographic for this particular project. But here goes: A high-speed train malfunctions on a cross-country journey and barrels into a series of mishaps involving an escaped scorpion, a haunted tunnel and a climatological event known as a "Stormaganza" while a lot of very funny people stand around making stupid, usually pun-adjacent jokes. Also: RuPaul sports a Deborah Vance wig to play U.S. President Judy Gagwell (see above, in re: pun-adjacency) and does some really stellar face-acting.
Also also: the great Rachel Bloom plays Donna, the only government official to understand the peril facing the train's passengers and crew, whose dire warnings fall on the cartoonishly boorish, misogynist ears of her co-workers. (Her boss, played by Evan Mulrooney, delivers a masterclass in the kind of prideful, bullying willfulness currently stalking the halls of power; it's the closest thing this defiantly silly little flick comes to a political statement.)
The whole thing's over and done with in a brisk 90-minute trot, and you'll have a very good time. Oh sure, you might find yourself squinting at the special effects, such as they are. Not because they evince the now-familiar muddiness of bad CGI, but because they instead bear the disquietingly bright, clean, sharp lines of AI slop. (Director Adam Shankman felt compelled to release a statement attempting to clarify the film's status, which reads in part: "There are a sum total of ZERO shots conceived by AI in the movie." [Emphasis mine, because he'd apparently already told Xtra Magazine that some AI was used, in combination with CGI.]) But in the end, the jankiness of the film's effects only feed into the hey-queens-let's-put-on-a-show vibe, not distract from it.
You may also find yourself wishing, as you watch drag queens trading barbs, flaring their nostrils and mime-slapping the bejeezus out of one another, that the barbs in question were better, meaner, fiercer. They're mildly cutting when they could and should be lacerating, and they feel like place-holders. But the script's downright neutronic joke-density ensures that you won't be able to linger over such quibbles; so many more jokes are barrelling toward you that by the time the credits roll (do I need to tell you there's a gag reel? Of course there's a gag reel) the comedic signal to noise ratio will prove satisfying.
And hey, it's Pride. You're already out and about; why not top off your brief interlude with these cinematic queens by taking in a real drag show where IRL performers are waiting, tucked and plucked and working hard, sweating through their foundation to entertain you? Between numbers you can nip off to the bar and debate with your friends which one of the film's dumb jokes was the absolute dumbest.
Trust me, you'll be there a while.
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