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...
Asif, is a good looking young Muslim man who loves to dress up in drag and perform. The documentary starts with him showing us the death threat emails that he has received. He is popular and successful as his alter ego Asifa Lahore. But behind the expertly applied make-up, she is fighting a major battle on behalf of all those who don't dare to wear their sexuality so openly. Then we see Imran, whose alter ego is Zareena Khan and i looking of love everywhere. She gets lots of proposals from men all the tim, but ultimately they (Muslim married men, in most cases), want to just have sex with her because they feel that since she is in drag, they are still straight. And finally we have Ibrahim, you gay man, who grew up in Mauritius, recently came out and has supportive family and now wants to venture into drag. We see Asif training and nurturing him for his debut. All is not hunky dory though. Asif also wants to hold a walk to bring more prominence in the society for gay asians but is very disappointed when its the Britishers who show up for the march but none of the gay asian community shows up. She is very disheartened. But ultimately, things change for her when she is nominated for Attitude magazine’s pride awards, which she eventually wins as well.
The documentary shows quite a few examples, specially in the case of Zareena Khan, the difficulty for many LGBT Muslims in expressing their true identity. Unlike most documentaries, this one was not boring or bleak. In fact, the characters they picked had interesting stories to tell, good narration and direction; expertly injecting the subject matter with a hefty dose of humour. It is undoubtedly very brave of the three main characters who had the guts to open their hearts out in open for the world to see without fearing for their life. They can be role models for a lot of LGBT youth , not necessarily of Muslim background. In an interview apparently Asifa mentioned “I’m a Muslim, I’m British/Pakistani and I’m also a drag queen. I totally understood the risks and I totally understood the impact that it would have on my life and I decided to do it because the issue is really important to me."
An eye opener for me in various ways, more documentaries like these deserve to be shown on public platforms throughout the world. (6.5/10)
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