STOP! THAT! TRAIN! Is. Kinda. Funny.

STOP! THAT! TRAIN! (Blu-ray)

2026 / 92 min

Bleecker Street

Review by Princess Pepper😽

Stop! That! Train! sort of plays like a parody film without any specific target in-mind. Oh sure, there’s the disaster movie plot, but this isn’t another Airplane!, which is ultimately a good thing because that ship sailed (or flew) decades ago. Nor is it a lunkheaded collection of pop culture references passing itself off as satire. Another good thing, since that’s ultimately what killed the genre in the first place.

I guess the big deal here is that the primary cast consists of famous drag queens. But interestingly enough, the actors’ real-world profession and/or lifestyle is not a major source of the humor. Yet-another good thing, because movies coasting on a one-joke premise are generally pretty shitty. So once the novelty wears off - roughly five minutes in - there are still plenty of gags in store.

The plot, such as it is, has a couple of stewardesses, DeeDee and Tess (Jujubee and Ginger Minj) who finagle new jobs aboard Glamazonian Express, a garishly-decorated luxury train filled with a variety of oddball crew & passengers (a virtual cornucopia of famous faces). Unfortunately, the train is heading straight for a massive storm (“Stormaganza”) that’ll kill them all. With the conductor incapacitated (stung by a passenger’s emotional support scorpion), it’s up to DeeDee and Tess to stop the train…with help from RuPaul as President Judy Gagwell.

RuPaul channels his inner Faye Dunaway.

Of course, the crisis is just a clothesline on which to hang all the gags…verbal gags, visual gags, running gags, raunchy gags, clever gags, dumb gags, etc. Some are funny, some aren't. The movie never approaches the brilliance of the classics made by Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, but while never uproarious, it’s generally pretty amusing, aided in no small part by a cast that appears to be having a good time. The jokes start wearing thin near the end, but overall, I’ve seen far worse parody films (this year, in fact, but more on that in an future review).

I do have one major beef, though. Most of the sequences featuring the actual train are AI-generated, a creatively-lazy and obnoxious distraction that sucks you right out of the movie on numerous occasions. In fact, I came close to rage-quitting on general principle. Watching a model train made with Legos is preferable to this AI slop, which has no place in any movie. 

EXTRA KIBBLES

FEATURETTES - Director’s Vision; Production Design. Both run under three minutes and are mostly promotional.

AUDIO COMMENTARY - By director Adam Shankman

TRAILER