Director – Adam Shankman – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 90m
***
A luxury bullet train hurtles towards a stormaganza in what is essentially Airplane! rehashed with drag queens – disaster movie and alleged comedy is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 21st
Commerical break. The Glamazonian Express. The bullet train ride across America where your every whim will be catered for by glamourous hostesses clad in a fetching, bright red. Pampering is the order of the day. Nothing is too much to ask. All the passengers and staff are chic and beautiful people.
Tess (Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (Jujubee) are train hostesses with low budget competitor Stank Rail. In marked contrast to Glamazonian staff, their uniforms are excrement brown and urine yellow-green. Their colleague Barbra (Latrice Royale) has recently been laid off, and further redundancies appear likely. Back at rail training college, the pair pledged to “See America”, but their career trajectory since then has been down the lavatory.
Then they overhear Glamazonian hostesses talking about a departure to Florida delayed because some hostesses have failed to show up. A quick visit to the ladies to improvise makeshift red uniforms, and they themselves show up at Glamazonian’s check-in desk, are given uniforms by Barbra (who does several jobs and will later reappear in other roles), and suddenly are Glamazonian hostesses.
The train’s number two driver (or conductor in US speak) is Cal (Brian Jordan Alvarez), on whom DeeDee has had a crush for years since seeing him featured in a gay porn magazine.
Its three stewardesses are mean girl trio Ayshleiygh (Symone), Alli (Marty Lauter aka Marcia Marcia Marcia) and their snobbish leader Amber (Brooke Lynn Hytes), who immediately take a dislike to the newcomers. The many passengers include an unnamed film star (Sarah Michelle Gellar from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, TV series, 1997-2003; Cruel Intentions, Roger Kumble, 1999; I Know What You Did Last Summer, Jim Gillespie, 1997), a divorcee (Missi Pyle from Gone Girl, David Fincher, 2014; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton, 2005; Galaxy Quest, Dean Parisot, 1999), and an unaccompanied minor (Asher Alexander) with a pet scorpion. In checking the lock on its box, one of our heroines accidentally leaves it open. It escapes, spends some time on her back (she doesn’t notice) before unwittingly transferring to number one train driver Davenport (Chris Parnell), who it kills.
Meanwhile, at train traffic control, Donna (Rachel Bloom from The Devil Wears Prada 2, David Frankel, 2026) notices on her instrument panel that the train is headed into a Stormaganza, a suggestion immediately ridiculed by her largely male colleagues. Nevertheless, she makes contact with the train to talk them through the crisis.
The White House is informed, and President Judy Gagwell (RuPaul Charles from RuPaul’s Drag Race, TV series, 2009), concerned for her plummeting ratings, decides to intervene. As she reminds her press secretary (Matt Rogers), she was elected on a platform of Fun (“It was my whole campaign”, cue pictures emblazoned with the two words ‘Judy’ and ‘fun’). However, her covered-up past with the US train defense program, in which she ran over a little girl playing on the tracks while her attention was on her appearance not her driving the train, comes back to haunt her… The little girl’s death sequence, complete with bouncing ball and absent child, is lifted from Mad Max (George Miller, 1979).
Produced by director Shankman, star Rupaul Charles and others, this is basically Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1980) filtered through a drag queen sensibility, which adds a heightened sensibility to the proceedings. Exterior shots of the travelling train are accomplished by tacky-looking CGI, which, to be honest, is all that’s needed, given that the film is going for over-the-top excess rather than any form of realism. Once the action leaves the station, it mostly takes place on a train which, like a passenger aircraft, is essentially a long, narrow space piloted by two drivers at the front.
Tasked by director Shankman with switching the action they’d already written from a plane to a train, screenwriters Christina Friel and Connor Wright are clearly aware of the ludicrous nature of this conceit, putting in a sequence where the three long-standing Glamazonian stewardesses do a whole song and dance routine about in-journey safety and emergency procedures before admitting that it’s a train, so there are no such rules!
The colourfully outrageous art direction, costumes and visuals are to die for. The often extremely silly characters are memorable in their own, quietly hilarious way. The script was deemed by director Shankman and many of the improvisation-experienced cast to be funny in itself, and not in need of improv. This may have been a mistake, because few of the gags (and they come at you non-stop) drew laughs at the screening I attended. I should clarify that I watched the film in a well-maintained, small preview theatre with maybe a dozen critics and four times as many empty seats. I can imagine a packed, out and out gay audience laughing a lot, and that being infectious in an auditorium. Or perhaps it would play better to a US audience. But the small, British audience I saw it with? No.
Airplane! was funnier. Indeed, Airplane! was funny.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Stop! That! Train! It’s watchable enough. I liked the characters who, although caricatured, are nicely put together by writers and performers. I particularly liked the scorpion’s antics, which are very silly indeed. Running gags include nobody recognising Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Missi Pyle’s seduction of the train driver she is unaware is deceased. RuPaul’s take as Madame President is a highlight. As mentioned, the visuals are amazing. Yet I scarcely laughed; the jokes may be plentiful, but unlike Airplane!, they fail to land. Perhaps it’s a question of seeing the film with the right audience.
Stop! That! Train! is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, August 21st.
Trailer: