Released: 13th August
Seen: 22nd September
February 2nd, 2009. That was the date that the first episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race aired on TV. At the time, it was almost a non-entity; it was effectively shot in the spare room at World of Wonder with a cast of Drag Queens no one had heard of, with a grand prize of 20K and some makeup and it aired on LogoTV. If you told anyone that this show would go on for 18 seasons, have a yearly All Stars spinoff, be franchised around the world and create superstars who would end up making world tours, appearing on multiple major TV shows and headlining Broadway, you would be insane, but that’s what happened. Drag Race gradually became a phenomenon, growing in scale to an absolutely insane degree that a feature film of some kind that utilised this talent pool was inevitable. With hundreds of drag queens who have proven just how insanely talented they are at World of Wonder’s disposal, it would be absolutely insane if they didn’t, at some point, try to use that talent pool to make a feature film and with Stop! That! Train! it feels like they’ve managed to figure out exactly what to do with the talent they have available because they made something that’s honestly better than it has any right being.
Stop! That! Train! follows a pair of train stewardesses, Tess (Ginger Minj) and Dede (Jujubee) who used to work at Stank Rail but got fired when Stank Rail went out of business. Needing a new job they manage to get on the crew of Glamazonian Express, a high class train that’s staffed by a trio of their former classmates and notable mean girls Amber (Brooke Lynn Hytes), Alli (Marty Lauter AKA Marcia Marcia Marcia) and Ayshleiygh (Symone). Things seem to be going OK, or at least as well as they can on the Glamazonian Express, when Donna Dusk (Rachel Bloom) from the United States Train Command Center discovers that the Glamazonian Express is about to go right through a stormaganza, a massive weather event that could destroy the train, kill everyone on board and most horrifyingly destroy Laurie Metcalfe’s home. Tess and Dede, along with the help of co-conductor Cal (Brian Jordan Alvarez) have to try to stop the train, and if they can’t, then they’ll have to hope to get whatever help they can from President Gagwell (RuPaul), if she can make it there to save them in time.
Stop! That! Train! has taken a lesson from the Flying High aka Airplane! school of parody, which is to say that everything is so over the top but played as dead straight as possible. Sure enough, it works spectacularly. Everything that these characters go through is about as over-the-top as you could hope for, from people carrying coffins around like it was nothing to the Glamazonian Express randomly going underwater for no reason and everyone just acting like it’s normal. It makes the comedy work really well; everyone manages to take the stupid, insane things they have to say and make it feel believable enough to work. It also means that there can be actual moments of drama and even romance; there’s an entire romantic subplot between Cal and Dede that’s actually quite effective because, despite some of the sillier jokes, there’s a real chemistry there that’s played about as seriously as you can in this kind of film.
Indeed, it must be said that despite how heightened everything is, the entire cast is just locked in place. All the drag queens involved absolutely kill it; Ginger Minj and Jujubee are such incredible leads that you want to root for them as a touching double act. On the other end, the bitchy trio of hostesses are so hilariously mean that they keep stealing every scene they have, in particular Brooke Lynn Hytes, who honestly should just be hired to play any cinematic bitch character that’s available. Even smaller roles like the brief appearance of Monet X Change or the appearance of Latrice Royale all lean into what makes these queens such major parts of the franchise and give them a chance to shine. Then there are the actual celebrity cameos by people who give their all to this silliness and never take themselves too seriously, especially Sarah Michelle Gellar, who spends the entire film basically as a punching bag in a way that works mostly because she sells it so well.
All this is held together by a script that’s so tight and joke-filled that it’s genuinely amazing, especially as someone who is so used to Drag Race main challenge scripts (which, to put it charitably, often contain some of the worst writing you could imagine that’s only saved due to the charismatic cast playing those parts). Stop! That! Train! has an actually funny script that blends the heightened insanity of an action film about a runaway vehicle with the goofy antics of a parody film. It also manages to throw in a few references to Drag Race itself but in ways that aren’t alienating to people who aren’t intimately familiar with every season of the show, even though it’s hard to imagine someone watching this who isn’t at least familiar with the show that made half the cast famous. Little things like throwing in a line like “The nipples are the eyes of the face” which fans would know is a reference to Drag Race UK Season 2’s snatch game but in Stop! That! Train! it’s just a drunk joke someone makes that actually works, or having a dance number where someone takes off a hat to reveal rose petals in reference to the iconic Sasha Velour’s performance of So Emotional. These little moments are nods to the knowing audience, little gifts that don’t distract from the main film, which is great because there’s already one minor element that’s creating a pretty big distraction.
So, Stop! That! Train! is one of those films that decided to use AI in its creation and not in something small like concept art (though that’s also bad, stop fucking doing it). No, this time the AI is used in things like the exterior shots of the train itself that keep recurring. This is sadly part of a pattern for World of Wonder, who have allowed AI to seep into a few Drag Race shows: the main show used it for a bit where Ru was painting the finalists and AI created the imagery, Drag Race France used it in the promotional elements and Down Under VS The World used it for photos that hung in the workroom. The company seems to use it a lot for minor things they could just use an actual artist for and… look, in this case, everything they used AI for probably cost whatever they ended up paying Charro to turn up to appear in the background for a few shots, and while I am always going to be in favour of Charro getting a paycheck, maybe instead you could just pay an artist to model a train in Blender and animate it for you. Maybe your silly little film could actually be funnier if you lean into the cheapness and use a child’s toy, anything other than AI elements that add nothing to the film other than put a huge negative on it that it really doesn’t need to have.
In general, Stop! That! Train! is a hilarious little film that shows off the immense talents of the queens who have come through the hallowed halls of RuPaul’s Drag Race. This should really be the start of a renaissance of drag queen films where these talented performers can show off what makes them special. With the right script and a cast this talented, it should be easy to make a ton more films like this, and I want them so badly because this one is just generally a lot of fun with a ton of charm that gets cut off every now and then by pointless AI bullshit. It’s a shame that the AI is going to make this film a non-starter for a lot of audiences because the audience who would be most against AI would probably be the one who would enjoy this the most. It’s a wildly funny time that shows just how much talent the drag community has been holding onto for a while and maybe, just maybe, we should be utilising them a lot more than we have been.
