Stop! That! Train!

Grade: C+

When I was beginning work on writing this, I Googled “RuPaul pronouns,” because I wanted to get it right. The first result yielded the most adorable quote from the one and only: “You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don’t care! Just as long as you call me.” The new movie Stop! That! Train!, directed by Adam Shankman (The Wedding Planner, A Walk to Remember, Bringing Down the House), is the team from RuPaul’s Drag Race trying their hand at an Airplane!/Naked Gun-style disaster farce. It’s an interesting meeting of the minds.

If you weren’t that well-versed in the drag community, you may come out with a newfound appreciation for the craft. It takes a special kind of talent, and before long, I stopped thinking about the performers behind the makeup and simply accepted the characters as the people they were portraying. The plot involves a train that can’t stop because the brakes are fried. Hijinks ensue with colorful characters. The president, played by RuPaul, gets involved. Granted, he is wearing women’s clothing and has on pounds of makeup, but he looks fantastic at 65, and still has the physical presence and comic timing necessary to anchor the chaos. Even if most of the jokes don’t work, he certainly does. You go, girl/boy/RuPaul/Regis/Kathie Lee!

It can be difficult to review a film like this, much less decide where to land when it comes to a grade. Did I laugh? Yes, but, to put it in perspective, my laughter during Fackham Hall and The Naked Gun was almost constant. Stop! That! Train! had me laughing just a handful of times.

It’s all too tempting for a critic to quote their favorite bits. Oh, what the heckaroonie, I’ll give you one. An exchange of dialogue goes something like:

“Nice to meet you. I’m DeeDee.”

“Oh, DeeDee! I had a dog once!”

“Named DeeDee?”

“No, I was just telling you I had a dog once.”

That sort of deadpan absurdity is where the movie is at its strongest. The screenwriting team’s greatest strength, however, lies in the recurring joke that changes slightly every time it appears. Rather than get sick of it, I found myself looking forward to the next variation. One running gag involves a character saying, “Tell it to me straight.” After receiving an answer, the character follows up with, “Now tell it to me gay.” Sarah Michelle Gellar is also the butt of a recurring joke that pays off nicely through repetition. Otherwise, the movie looks cheaply made and, even at only ninety minutes, is boring much more often than it is funny.

I bestow upon Stop! That! Train! the most affectionate C+ of the year. I appreciate and respect what the filmmakers were trying to do, even if it didn’t quite work for me. I’m glad something like this didn’t go straight to streaming, because we need more straight-up comedies in theaters. We haven’t had enough of them in recent years. The best reason to see Stop! That! Train! isn’t because it’s a great comedy. It isn’t. The best reason is to support an increasingly endangered kind of theatrical comedy—one willing to be broad, silly, and unapologetically strange. If enough people buy tickets, maybe we’ll get a few more swings like this one.

Grade: C+