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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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Love Is All You Need?

By Golu
I am sure the idea behind this film might have been novel and to educate people and be tolerant towards LGBTQI+ folks, but somehow I personally found the film distasteful and could just never wrap my head around it. To top it, since the film goes shifting around multiple scenes, at one point it was difficult to follow. Something that could have been shown in a crisp educating manner took almost 2 hours and by the end of it, even though the intention was otherwise, siding with heterosexual victims felt weirdly non ethical.

This film takes places in a society where being homosexual is a norm and heterosexuals are bullied and frowned up. They are called names like 'Ro' and gay and given a very hard time. The story is focussed on two (or three) protagonists. The star player of college football team Jude is in a happy relationship with her girlfriend, but when a male college mate who is a sports journalist comes into picture, she starts feeling something she has never before and soon finds herself in a heterosexual relationship. Then we have a young girl, who is bullied in the school for being weird and 'Ro' to the extent that she tries to take her own life. In all this, its the female church reverend , who continues to fill hatred in the community's heads that lord doesn't want a man and a woman to be together. When Jude's affair with a guy goes public there is a huge outcry and the guy's friends end up killing him on orders from the reverend. Hopefully life will be better for heteros.

The film tries to thrusts its audience into another thought of existence that does more than just acknowledge there is a serious social problem affecting the gay community and does more than just talk about the issue. But in my strong opinion, it fails miserably. It fails to address the real reasons behind bigotry, and instead presents homophobia as an either/or situation that can be easily flipflopped, when it can't. I mean it just takes issues faced by gay community and it reverses the scenario in the hope that it would educate straight people and be more empathetic, but I don't think this film manages to do any of it. We don't need a hate propaganda whether its for gays or straight. What we need is a more balanced world and art that shows it. I also felt the film was primarily from a women's perspective, which is understandable, but shortchanging the struggles of boys and men in the film was way too obvious. The acting by all was pretty decent given the material provided to them, but as I said before, this movie, IMO, doesn't achieve what it was hoping to. Sure, you can come and argue and try to justify to me the motives but if this was to help gay people like me and if I am not convinced it does that, then my voice should count. (3/10)
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