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Stop! That! Train!

By Golu
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...
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Sakristan (Filipino Series) [Altar Boy]

By Golu
This was such a silly series to make. I am sure when this was scripted on paper, it would have sounded as path breaking, but OMG! the execution is so bad, you will be cringed. The crass so-called comedy does even worse. A potential decent storyline gone wrong with awful direction. At 16-18 minutes each, this series is 8 episodes in total.

An athletic student Zach, is ordered by the school board to become an altar server as a punishment for an offense he committed so that he can stay away from mischievous activities. As part of this program he is put under Christian as part of the buddy program, who is a senior altar boy. Soon love starts developing between the two boys and Christian even tells the church about it. Just when things were going well, Christians' Best friend Wolf confesses his love for him. Zach always thought that Wolf has feeling for Christian and to prove to him that Wolf is also gay, he kissed him which Christian sees. The misunderstanding between the two boys keeps growing and they make peace eventually citing the rushed circumstances of them getting into a relationship. The ending was a bit weird where Zach also joins the church now and maybe they will have a future together.

As I said before, there was a hint of a decent story but instead we are left with some amateurish acting, bad direction and horrible sound quality. I found myself not really caring about any of the characters or their motivations. It feels the makers were trying to make a bold statement about church being accepting of all sexualities and God loves all, but by keeping all the gay stereotypes in the series,  it ended up looking like a student project. This stereotyping is not helping anyone's cause. The screenplay just randomly kept moving from one point to the other. It was very shabby and corny. The awkward dialogues intended as jokes weren't really funny at all. And gosh! why so many scenes of people stuffing food in their mouths? Thats not funny by any means. The lead actors had potential but total lack of chemistry and conviction laced with such a bad direction made them look bad on screen.

There are so many Asian BL stories out there these days, that it is hard to keep up. I wish someone had told me to avoid this one or watch only if you have nothing else better to do. (2.5/10)
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Comments

Hedgehog said…
There’s a lot of Filipino BL series and to be honest I haven’t seen any of them. Cause I don’t know which one to watch. Based on your review I definitely not going to touch this one. Thanks for guiding in finding the right series to watch.
December 12, 2020 at 2:08 PM
Golu said…
you are welcome. and Now I hope someone can guide me also to help me save some of my time.
December 12, 2020 at 3:01 PM
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