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...
An aspiring dancer named Ben shows up in Los Angeles and moves in with his two best friends Jason and Corey, the three of them looking to find love in the city of dreams while also seeking fulfillment in their careers. He is just coming out and desperate to find love. He meets fellow dancer Craig, with whom he starts practicing a musical piece. Little does Ben know that Craig has an outlook that's more in step with his than he realizes. Jason delivers humorless stand-up comedy routines while pursuing an industry bigwig in the hopes of making it in show business. H indulges in meaningless sex. Things change when he meets a big shot producer who could help him advance his career bu he blows that up as well. Finally we have Corey who airs his fear of sex by donning garish outfits and working as assistant to a former star, pretending to be a girl (out confused character of the film in my opinion). The three just navigate through the randomness of West Hollywood, moving from man to man, but still hoping to find love.
The so called humor of the film is situational and quite honestly, it is very awkward. There is no sense of background to either the characters or their relationship, there is little connection between scenes, everything is stereotyped to its greatest extent and most of the dialogue makes no sense. The trio talk to each other in a lot of scenes and clearly neither has any depth of life understanding to be giving each other any advice on career, life or love. The dance routine between Jason and Corey are boring. The humor of Corey dressed up as woman in garish outfits every single time working for an over the top fading celebrity are supposed to invoke laughter but they just fall flat and you can't help but fast forward those cringe scenes. The actors look ok but are just bad. Clearly, a lack of coherent screenplay and awful direction is to helping anyone here. In short, it’s garbage, and has far too little eye candy exploitation to make up for it. Avoid. (2.5/10)
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