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...
OMG! This was such a bad show. The acting was horrendous. Agreed that maybe the intentions of the writers was noble to may be bring to focus the stigma around being gay, homophobia and HIV, but the way this series was done was so amateurish, very badly written and directed and overall gives an impression of a huge time waste. And I am not kidding. Shown through only zoom chats and videos, I am not even sure of the relevance of the title. Thankfully its 8 episodes of about 10 minutes each.
Greg and Axel, who have been friends for long are now in a loving relationship, but somehow Greg is not comfortable with Axel sharing their pictures online, since Greg's mother is pretty homophobic. Suddenly Patrick, who was Greg's ex-boyfriend is back in the picture and now Axel is confused on where Greg's loyalties lie. Greg clearly still has feelings for Patrick and so he breaks Axel's heart to go back to him. This is when Axel confronts Patrick that he knows that the reason Patrick left Greg was because he was HIV positive and that Patrick was disgusted by the idea. Patrick then informs him that now he is also positive so wants Greg back (which doesn't make sense). But seeing how heartbroken Axel is, Patrick gets some sense and he decides to break up with Greg, again. Heartbroken Greg calls for support from Axel. And in the rush to meet Greg, Axel gets into an accident and dies living everyone behind.
See, the story above had potential. But so much fluff time is wasted in first 8 episodes. Literally the double timing, ex boyfriend, love, random zoom chats with friends is all a colossal waste of time. The characters are all so bland and boring and their interactions feels like they are reading the lines off their computer screens. The HIV stigma storyline randomly comes out of nowhere and is given such a bad execution that I couldn't believe it. The actors playing Greg and Axel were both terrible with same expression , same diction throughout the entire show. They have zero chemistry. Not that anyone else is any better. However good the intention of the series might have been, this is an extremely poor and amateurish execution. Please don't wast your time on this. (2/10)

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