{"id":13703,"date":"2026-06-14T23:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13703"},"modified":"2026-06-14T23:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:44:21","slug":"stop-that-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13703","title":{"rendered":"Stop! That! Train!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was a time &#8212; around the &#8217;60s and &#8217;70s &#8212; when disaster movies were all the rage. There was no better, more entertaining, more consistently profitable way to deliver action and suspense with top-of-the-line special effects. But then Zucker\/Abrahams\/Zucker came along and thoroughly spoofed the genre into oblivion. Nowadays, nobody remembers anything from that era of disaster flick except for <em>Airplane!<\/em> and <em>The Poseidon Adventure<\/em>. Maybe <em>The Towering Inferno<\/em> and the &#8217;70s remake of <em>King Kong<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Furthermore, times have changed and we&#8217;re now living in the era of mass shootings and climate change. On a regular basis, real life is bringing us disasters far more tragically lethal than any filmmaker would be comfortable depicting in a crowd-pleasing four-quadrant work of escapist fiction. In a climate-changed world that may become uninhabitable within our lifetime, a film about trying to survive a hurricane doesn&#8217;t hit the same way. (Just ask Roland Emmerich.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So here we are with <em>Stop! That! Train!<\/em>, made and marketed as a RuPaul vehicle loaded with gay jokes and celebrity cameos. And somehow, the filmmakers decided that a disaster movie parody made for the ideal plot. Quite random, but it&#8217;s not like anyone cares about logic in a spoof film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The premise is simple: Our stage is set on the Glamazonian bullet train, the transcontinental railway express heading from Los Angeles to Celebration, FL. Unfortunately, the bullet train runs directly into a freak &#8220;stormaganza&#8221; that destroys the brakes with a lightning strike. So now our characters have to find some way of stopping a runaway train before it runs into a nuclear reactor, a puppy orphanage, a dozen Make-A-Wish kids, and the home of a quasi-famous character actor, all sitting directly next to the Celebration Train Station. Hilarity ensues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because the trailers and posters have made such a big deal out of this, you already know the cast is packed to the rafters. Not surprisingly, most of the actors involved are playing sight gags and throwaway cameos. Here are some of the highlights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Our de facto protagonists are Tess and DeeDee, respectively played by Ginger Minj and Jujubee. These two are lifelong best friends who only ever wanted to see the world together, and they fluke their way into their dream jobs as railway attendants on the Glamazonian. Along the way, there&#8217;s a fracture between them as Tess is only after her own ambitions while DeeDee is obsessively focused on the handsome yet rock-stupid train co-conductor (Cal, played by Brian Jordan Alvarez).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Amber, Alli, and Ayshleiygh (respectively played by Brooke Lynn Hytes, Marty Lauter, and Symone) are three other Glamazonian railway attendants, the paper-thin bullies who antagonize our leads.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>RuPaul Charles plays President Judy Gagwell, a commander-in-chief who&#8217;s pathetically incompetent at handling any kind of emergencies or downward approval ratings. This is mostly due to her &#8220;hot flashbacks&#8221;, stemming from a traumatic incident when she was part of the railway armed forces. (Yes, there&#8217;s a branch of the military that operates exclusively by train. It was Reagan&#8217;s idea, apparently.) So naturally, Judy has to learn to get over her PTSD so she can step up and be the hero and save the day, blah blah blah.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Donna Dusk (Rachel Bloom) is the only train traffic controller taking the stormaganza seriously, but everyone actively degrades her because she&#8217;s a woman with glasses. She&#8217;s the closest thing this movie gets to a &#8220;straight man&#8221;.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Barbra (Latrice Royale) plays a running gag, as she&#8217;s got so many side hustles that she keeps popping up everywhere. Her primary job is insulting Donna.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Conductor Davenport (Chris Parnell) is mostly there to make an ass of himself until he finally gets incapacitated by a plot contrivance.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sarah Michelle Gellar appears as an unnamed washed-up &#8217;90s actress. (Lucky she&#8217;s such good friends with the director &#8212; Adam Shankman officiated her wedding.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Missi Pyle plays a relentlessly horny divorcee.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Natasha Leggero plays an obnoxious passenger who can&#8217;t stop talking on her phone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From all of this, it should already be clear that the film leans hard and heavy into the over-the-top campiness that&#8217;s so foundational to queer culture, the disaster genre, and parody films in general. On paper, it sounds like a surprisingly ingenious fit. And the target audience will probably eat up every last pun, sight gag, innuendo, musical number, and put-down joke. But there are a number of reasons why it didn&#8217;t work for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First of all, this movie only has one speed: Full-throttle. Yes, I understand that&#8217;s meant to be a feature and not a bug. (This is a movie about a runaway train, after all.) But when every character and every scene are all constantly trying to one-up each other without any additional flavors or nuances, it gets monotonous enough to kill the comedy. This is an especially huge problem with the jokes and gags that drag on and on and on, long after we&#8217;ve all gotten the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Secondly, none of these characters are likeable. Again, I understand that comes with the nature of the film. It&#8217;s a parody film, so of course the characters are all paper-thin parodies of humanity. And yes, I understand that throwing shade is part of queer culture, particularly among drag performers. (Oh yeah, did I mention that half the leading characters are played by drag performers?) But that gets to be a big fucking problem through the umpteen goddamn times when the characters get distracted by their own petty squabbles and romances instead of focusing on the plot. There comes a point when it gets uncomfortable and annoying, watching so many characters with nothing better to do than snipe at each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead of, y&#8217;know, doing something about the runaway train that&#8217;s going to kill them all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The plot only works if the Glamazonian runaway train is such a potentially fatal catastrophe that resolving it is a matter of national security. But the characters consistently forget about the ongoing existential threat and\/or find some way to make light of it when interrupted by their own personal hangups. Oh, and the ultimate solution for the runaway train doesn&#8217;t even rise to the level of a deus ex machina. Thus the film trivializes the runaway train while also emphasizing the crisis &#8212; the two approaches cancel each other out and it doesn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, it&#8217;s a parody film that only exists to tell jokes. But nearly all of those jokes depend on the context of a hugely serious disaster. And the film offers neither the intelligence nor the effort to try and subvert or lampshade all the cliches of the genre, simply rehashing the rote plot and threadbare character arcs beat for beat. It gets old and unfunny with depressing speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course I&#8217;m acutely aware that <em>Stop! That! Train!<\/em> was tailor-made for a highly particular audience, and I&#8217;m not in it. I sincerely hope that the intended audience enjoys it. For my part, I can only say that the film works exactly as intended&#8230; and yet the jokes are not enough to justify the film&#8217;s existence. Not when it means characters who are this unpleasant to be around, a plot that consistently undercuts itself, and rehashing worn-out cliches without anything new or clever to add to the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;ve seen the trailer and the poster, you already know exactly what you&#8217;re getting. Make of that what you will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Derailed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":13705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5173,5172,5174,5175],"class_list":["post-13703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ginger-minj","tag-jujubee","tag-rupaul-charles","tag-stop-that-train"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/PXL_20260615_063048520-scaled-e1781505535352.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3uOb3-3z1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13707,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13703\/revisions\/13707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}