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...
There is a group called warriors, who help lords in catching of thieves, bandits, kidnappers act in the rural towns and jungles etc. When the most wanted bandit kidnaps the daughter of a wealthy landowner, who reigns over the shepherds of the area, its time to track him down. Fogo is the lead warrior who is pretty popular for his quick results. He teams up with two other warriors with other unique qualities to team up with him. But the trio is also in favor of liberation shepherds and dependency on a certain kind of meat because of which these looting and killings happen. While all this is going on, our lead Fogo also struggles with love. There is an older married man, who he deeply loves but who would never reciprocate his feelings. And then there is a bank manager, with whom Fogo has a love / sex relationship but somehow Fogo feels he is not the man that he would want to be with for longer time.
The rural rustic setting in an almost medieval times of bandits and warriors etc, make this film an interesting watch. There are talks of this mysterious animal, the desire of whose meat is causing most of the issues in that area around looting and killing. The desire is also free floating in this world, which is clearly seen by Fogo having affairs and love sessions in jungle in the night and the fact that he can actually share and talk about his love for other man without any hesitation means that sexuality is not an issue in this time period. Love and sex for him is as important as his passion to try and capture the bandits and make money for himself. The film may be all over the place and has way too many characters and odd names to keep track of, but somehow the film was still entertaining. I would look forward to seeing what would happen next. I feel a story like this could be made into a very elaborate period/fantasy web series and could potentially do well. Fogo's sexuality wasn't really critical to the plot that the makers were trying to tell, except that he is a man like anyone else with sexual needs. Even if those scenes were with a woman or not there at all, it wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. I think the idea was to just put a humane side to the actor.
An oddball of a film, this was still an alright watch. Again, remember this is not a queer film per say. Watch it for something interesting but it is as easily missable too. (5/10)
Comments