Coming out of the same studio that gave us RuPaul's Drag Race, and stacked with a whole crew of former contestants, Stop! That! Train! plays like RuPaul basically taking a bow for the entire franchise she's built. It's not really a gay film in the traditional sense, but with so many drag stars from Ru's shows popping up alongside a few cameos from well known out gay actors, I figured it earns a spot on this blog anyway. The whole thing is completely over the top, packed with GenZ slang, loud flashy visuals, and humor that's constantly winking at you knowing how ridiculous it is. Going in you'd assume it's meant to be a laugh riot, and a lot of critics online seem to be eating it up, but I just couldn't get into it at all. I've never really been someone who vibes with campy silly stuff like this, so honestly my reaction doesn't surprise me one bit. The setup follows Tess and DeeDee, two low level stewardesses who sneak onto the fancy Glamazonian E...
Jaume is a middle aged professor who is dying (we don’t know of what). His best friend os fellow university friend Pere, who Jaume loved all his life but is now his best friend. Here has a lovely wife and a 19 year old daughter, who has just found out that she is pregnant. The child is of David, a rebel-without-a-cause kind of college student. Pere hates David while Jaume thinks that he is one of the most brilliant students, albeit a rebel and Jaume finds himself falling in love with David. He is shocked when he finds out that David actually hustles as a male prostitute to make money. He tries to get David focuses on literature and do something with his life but David is a rebel. Professor comes up with this brilliant plan of making sure that Pere’s daughter actually keeps the child and does not abort. He even requests Pere to keep the baby because that is the only way he will have some sort of legacy left behind after he dies. The baby will have the blood of the two men the professor has loved the most, and will be his spiritual grandchild. Of course, everyone thinks that’s is the craziest idea. At the sometime when Pere’s wife spends an entire day with her daughter since they found about her pregnancy, she realises she is no longer in love with here and she needs to do something more meaningful with her own life.
The film is essentially about these 5 characters with central focus on the professor. All these individuals are racing against the clock, arguing and hurting each other. Interestingly, unlike most films, all the characters are pretty much thinking only about themselves and do not consider the effects on others. It is a dense & dark film where the characters forget that there's a fine line between wishes and making them possible with another person. Performance wise, everyone does a great job. Personally, I would have liked to see David’s character more developed. We hear a few times that his father committed suicide but beyond that we never get more details of the depth of the character. There is definitely a pain inside but what are the reason and why is he not letting professor make his life better, are still some questions that kept bothering me even after I finished watching the film.
Comments