The strongest joke in Stop! That! Train! may simply be the sight of RuPaul as US president Judy Gagwell. It was the one gag that genuinely made me laugh in a movie otherwise determined to bombard its audience with knowing absurdity. For 90 minutes, the mugging, Gen Z slang, glaring colors and exaggerated visuals barely pause. Plenty of online critics appear delighted by the result, but despite its obvious ambition to be a nonstop comedy, it never clicked for me.
At least the calamity powering all that noise is appropriately ridiculous. Low-level stewardesses Tess and DeeDee secretly board the luxurious Glamazonian Express on the very day it is due to meet the enormous Stormaganza. The brakes inevitably fail, leaving the train hurtling out of control while the storm closes in. Its path takes it toward an extraordinary patch of land occupied by a nuclear reactor, a dog shelter and actress Laurie Metcalf's home.
The people who might prevent disaster are rapidly compromised. A rogue scorpion incapacitates the only crew member who knows what to do, while President Gagwell's old PTSD resurfaces at precisely the wrong moment. Whether the president can rescue everyone remains uncertain, so Tess and DeeDee are forced to take responsibility themselves. Tess occupies and reassures the passengers as DeeDee joins Cal in an attempt to repair the controls.
Cal is also the conductor DeeDee is wildly attracted to, and apparently the kind of man worthy of appearing in a publication called Conductors We Want to See the Dick Of. He is played by English Teacher's Jordan Alvarez, who receives a substantial amount of screen time as DeeDee's romantic interest. Unfortunately, his presence weighs down what might otherwise have worked as brainless fun.
Director Adam Shankman has made something unlikely to connect with a broad audience. Although the actual story is not especially gay, its comedy seems designed overwhelmingly for gay viewers. The production comes from the studio behind RuPaul's Drag Race, fills its cast with former contestants and adds several appearances by prominent openly gay actors. That is enough to justify including it on this blog, even if it does not qualify as a gay film in the conventional sense. More than anything, the movie resembles RuPaul accepting applause for the entire franchise she has created.
Drag culture's appetite for heightened performance is plainly central to the intended pleasure. Viewers prepared for relentless camp and deliberate foolishness may be much more receptive than I was. I have never had much enthusiasm for this particular kind of silly camp, so my response was entirely predictable; enjoying it requires a very specific mood, and I was nowhere near it.
Visually, however, the film is impressive. Its production design is genuinely beautiful, with purposeful details and an appealing palette. The sets, costumes and art direction appear to deploy virtually every available color. That craftsmanship makes the creative caution elsewhere even more disappointing. Drag is a wonderfully absurd art form, yet a production with this much crossdressing talent settles for material that feels safe and foreseeable. The stream of cameos cannot disguise that limitation.
Switching off your brain completely might make Stop! That! Train! tolerable, but RuPaul and this full roster of queens should have been given a far better-built vehicle. What they received instead is essentially one glorified, feature-length Drag Race acting challenge. (2/10)
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