Poor Sarah Michelle Gellar…
Remember glamorous rail travel? Oh, you don’t? Don’t worry…Glamazonian Express has you covered. The opening montage of Adam Shankman’s furiously funny stupid-a-thon Stop! That! Train!, has all the trains you could ever want. Trains going this way. Trains going that way. Old trains. New trains. Toy trains. Audiences at large were vocally shocked when Akiva Schaffer’s The Naked Gun brought the funny in a majorly silly way last year, and Shankman’s film keeps that tradition alive while amping up the pop culture consciousness on travel disaster absurdity. Starring RuPaul as our Commandress-In-Chief, a bevy of Drag Race alums, a drug-addled Raggedy Ann doll, Stop! That! Train! delivers on the laughs and just wants you to have a good time while remaining g-g-g-gay as hell.
Two down-on-their luck train stewardess, DeeDee and Tess, take a chance to leave their dead end job at Stank Rail and switch over to Glamazonian Express when they hear that two other girls never showed up and the service needs assistance to their destination of Celebration, Florida. They tear off their ugly yellow and brown uniforms and board a new opportunity and don’t look back. Played by recent RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars winner Ginger Minj and perennial contestant Jujubee, their Tess and DeeDee are appropriately bright-eyed and just the right amount of dim.
Once aboard and determined to keep their new gig, Tess and DeeDee assist a buffet of queer-friendly stars (Drew Droege, Nicole Richie, and Natasha Leggero, to name a few) and are confronted by a trio of mean girl first-class stewardesses: Amber (Brooke Lynn Hytes), Ayshleiygh (Symone), and Alli (Marty Lauter), who perform a welcome number that shoves the newbies to the sidelines. If Leland needs me to spearhead an Original Song Oscar campaign, hit me up, please. On the outside, Rachel Bloom’s Donna Dusk (fantastic porn name) wearily chugs along in her manosphere of a control room when she discovers that an epic storm, a Stormaganza, if you will, is directly in the train’s path. A storm so big that the ancient Egyptians equated it with retribution. A storm so big that it calls upon the attention of…
RuPaul’s President Judy Gagwell.
Yes, that sentence does needs its own line, thank you very much,.
Just when Gagwell is in an “Oprah mood” to give everyone in America a tax write-off, her Chief of Staff (headed by Matt Rogers) informs the President of the impending disaster. Decision-making isn’t what Gagwell ran her campaign on (“She Fun!” was her campaign slogan), and she keeps an applause-o-meter style thermometer in her office go keep tabs on her approval rating. Oh, and she may or may not have some trauma surrounding trains, death, and a big cover-up that helped her with her presidential bid.
Stop! That! Train! keeps the laughs coming at breakneck speed. In a way, the simple plot staying on one track doesn’t matter–Shankman keeps the pace with sight gags (“The brakes are fried!”–cut to fried chicken circling the engine), sparkle, and Latrice Royale returning over and over again in the film’s funniest running joke. Costume designer Salvador Pérez Jr. play up the camp factor with bright colors in the train uniforms and Gagwell’s pantsuits.
Yes, there are moments that remind us of Drag Race (it is RuPaul’s biggest cinematic moment to date, after all), so we can overlook references to Sasha Velour’s rose petals, RuPaul’s most famous and celebrated catchphrases, and the presence of The Pit Crew. Hey, Bruno! I balk at the notion, though, that this is just “an extended Drag Race challenge sketch,” as I have heard many of my local gays ponder when we talk about our excitement to see this. The script, by Christina Friel and Connor Wright, targets an experience akin to The Naked Gun and Airplane! (with a dash of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) while carving a sequined niche for itself.
You want me to tell it to you straight? Ew, no. During Pride–how dare you.
But I will tell it to you gay. If you just want to laugh and know buffoonery isn’t a dirty word, all aboard, baby, because Stop! That! Train! will take you to your silliest destination.
Stop! That! Train! is in theaters now.
