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...
Starting on a Tuesday night, we meet Noah, an introverted young engineer who needs to take pills due to a traumatic experience and has visions of a child. Next to him in Lohan, a tattoo artist and an asthmatic who likes to smoke and they both are apparently on a road trip with their best straight friend couple. A bond grows between the two men during the trip, they have fun visiting a church where Noah sits and Lohan confesses his impure thoughts, there is a first kiss after a Karaoke night, and there are arguments while bowling. As days go by they get to know each other while moving from one place to another, providing reflections on their lives and inner feelings. Lohan realizes and says Noah has entered his head like a tumor that doesn´t want to get out. We see how they had met a day before the film started. And it ends with a gay basher bashing the two in which Lohan has some sort of accident. The film has a bt of weird ending, which takes into account a comment that Noah had made earlier as to he is working on a chip that can save only nice memories for you.
What seems like an oddball gay romance turns into a weird, surreal fantasy film defying all and any expectations. It's imaginative and fired up and the two boys are extremely hot and share a very good chemistry. But this ending can be very controversial in the sense that people will either love it or hate it. I felt that it was rather under developed. The makers could have expanded more on the end if they were anyways trying to make a full length feature. These kind of shockers and abrupt ends work nicely in a short film format. Here it felt that something was missing. There are real and dreamy sequences, movie provides little information about the couple that also share the road and the cultural and social environment. This film is hard to classify as gay romance, sci-fi or just plain drama. The back stories of both characters are missing so the audience can only take them at face value. There are certainly interesting moments along the way but by the time the film ends, you wonder what really happened. It was likely an interesting idea on paper but an opportunity lost. A deliberately vague and almost dream-like watch, the film feels more like a concept than a fully-fledged story. (4/10)
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