by Adrian Nguyen
Worth: $11.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
RuPaul, Ginger Minj, Jujubee, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Latrice Royale, Marcia Marcia Marcia, Symone, Matt Rogers
Intro:
Fans of RuPaul would find something amusing in this middle-of-the-road parody...
Parody films are experiencing a renaissance not seen since the 2000s, ranging from the reboots of The Naked Gun and Scary Movie to spoof movies like Fackham Hall. The latest entry to this wave is Stop! That! Train!, which sees director Adam Shankman harken back to the peak days of Flying High and Hot Shots. The film’s approach of relying on reference-laden jokes and physical humour is delivered with a frenetic pace that will get an easy laugh, but it demonstrates the genre turning into a victim of its own hubris when the majority of gags don’t land.
These jokes rely on pun-filled dialogue to do the legwork before leading into a misdirect. One scene shows a passenger being asked to carry her mother, then the camera pans to her mother’s coffin. Then there’s another joke in which a character says that “it’s clear that no one is buying what I’m saying”, before the film cuts to a booth of merchandise yet to be sold. Rinse and repeat.
The drag queens Ginger Minj and Jujubee carry most of the film, playing two train stewardesses, Tess and Dee Dee, tasked to save the Glamazonian Express from crashing near actress Laurie Metcalfe’s house. There are two flamboyant musical numbers, brought about by a group of catty train stewardesses with excess innuendo. The real attraction, of course, is RuPaul, who plays President Judy Gagwell, a homage to various Leslie Nielsen characters from OG parody films.
There are cameos galore, the best of which are Sarah Michelle Gellar, credited in the film as a prominent actress who is often ignored, Chris Parnell, as a deadpan conductor, and Rachel Bloom as an employee at the train command centre helping the stewardesses, while she has to prove herself in front of a group of macho men.
Fans of RuPaul would find something amusing in this middle-of-the-road parody of Unstoppable etc.
