RuPaul in Throwback ’70s Disaster Parody

How funny you find the title of Stop! That! Train! — or specifically, its emphatic exclamation points — should prove a reliable litmus test for the number of laughs you get out of Adam Shankman’s nutty fusillade of multiple jokes per minute. The ebullient parody’s obvious antecedent is Airplane! and its many imitator spoofs of ‘70s disaster movies, but it dips just as significantly for inspiration into Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion and Mean Girls. 

Sherpherded by World of Wonder co-founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the movie is bred from the DNA of the RuPaul’s Drag Race empire, its ensemble stuffed to the gills with that long-running reality contest’s alumnae alongside a slew of comedy recruits and random celebs, many of them former Drag Race judges.

While RuPaul puts her impeccable comic timing, bawdy cackle and elevated drag to excellent use as U.S. president Judy Gagwell (a name fit for a vintage Bond girl), kicking up the energy whenever she’s onscreen, the true stars and MVPs are Ginger Minj and Jujubee, a pairing that’s pure delight. With a sweetness that just won’t quit — even through the inevitable falling out baked into the formula — they play Tess and DeeDee, respectively. Best friends since Train Hostess Academy, their dreams of seeing America in style grow more stagnant with each shift at budget travel service Stank Rail.

Their luck changes when a staff shortage means the high-speed luxury Glamazonian Express urgently needs train stewardesses (screw the gender-neutrality of “attendants”) for an imminent departure. The sleek bullet train is everything Tess and DeeDee ever wanted in their jobs, though the mean girls in first class — led by Amber (Brooke Lynn Hytes), a catty Queen Bee tormentor since the academy, flanked by acolytes Ayshleiygh (Symone) and Alli (Marty Lauter, aka Marcia Marcia Marcia) — immediately exile them to economy, with the poor people.

Things start looking up when love-starved DeeDee has a meaningful moment with assistant conductor Cal (Brian Jordan Alvarez of English Teacher), a dumb hunk she’s been crushing on since he was featured in the niche periodical, Conductors We Want to See the Dick Of. If Alvarez is giving maximum Keanu Reeves, Chris Parnell more subtly channels Leslie Nielsen as Conductor Davenport, given to discursively inappropriate announcements over the PA system about his spiral into drug use and sex work after his marriage collapsed.

In case it’s not abundantly clear, this film is waaay gay, its humor precision-targeted for LGBTQ audiences, preferably on edibles, though not in a way that excludes anyone else. As is invariably the case with movie parodies of this kind, not all the jokes land, but co-writers Conner Wright and Christina Friel throw so many gags at the wall that they stick more often than not. And Shankman — who introduced the film on opening night of NewFest promising, “If Hairspray wasn’t gay enough for you…” — is so clearly having a blast with his populous ensemble that an irrepressible joy and verve buoy the material throughout.

The big conflicts surface when Donna Dusk (Rachel Bloom), seemingly the one person paying attention at the central control tower, puts out an alert that the train is heading directly into a catastrophic weather event dubbed a “stormaganza.” Around the same time, a lightning strike takes out the brake system, rendering the train unstoppable; and a rogue scorpion puts the one person in the crew compartment who knows what he’s doing out of commission. 

In Washington, President Gagwell is informed of the situation by her amusingly sycophantic press secretary (Matt Rogers). But Judy has a meltdown during a press briefing, when PTSD resurfaces from her time in the Rail Force, a Reagan-era military initiative to defend America by train. That moment of public confusion causes her approval rating to plummet on a scale that tops out at “Love Her!” and bottoms at “Lea Michele, 2020.” 

Some of the movie’s choicest moments come from scenes in and around the Oval Office. RuPaul is such a pro that almost every line reading is a zinger (love Judy’s campaign slogan: “She Fun!”), and Rogers is hilarious running the press huddle with an iron fist. He’s quick to follow through on his threat to eject reporters asking difficult questions, having them dragged out and put to work in a sweatshop making Zara handbags.

With the train out of control and headed for impact in an area with a nuclear reactor, a dog shelter and “the home of beloved actress Laurie Metcalf,” Tess and DeeDee are forced to take charge, the former keeping the passengers entertained and distracted and the latter joining Cal at the control panels. It’s here, too, that Tess pulls a Cady Heron, inadvertently deposing Amber’s Regina George from her pedestal and causing a rift with DeeDee when she loses sight of her loyalties.

The comedy foundation here, of course, is that the filmmakers have simply tweaked the standard airline disaster scenario to happen on a train. They even toss in a nun, like Helen Reddy’s Sister Ruth in the craptastic Airport 1975 and her spoof counterpart in Airplane! played by disaster movie theme song queen Maureen McGovern. 

It’s gleefully nonsensical, right down to the safety demonstration — a musical number from Amber & Co. with a voguing dance break — seat belts and oxygen masks. Even the concept of “train hostesses” has been plucked directly out of the sky, as has the disaster staple of explosive decompression and people being sucked out of open windows or doors. The rules of plot logic don’t apply. Chaos reigns. Sure, let’s turn one car of the train into a glitzy disco and the quiet car into a meditation retreat. Why not?

Shankman keeps a steady hand on the wheel, no doubt comfortable in the knowledge that if a one-liner or slapstick bit misses the mark, there will be a bunch more to follow. The movie was shot in a remarkably tight 19 days, and while there are echoes of crafty Drag Race resourcefulness in the production design and costumes (Alessandro Marvelli and Salvador Pérez Jr., respectively), Stop! That! Train! is surprisingly polished. The VFX work in the eye of the stormaganza or the occasionally rough greenscreen sequence might look a little shoddy, but that’s all part of the fun. Among the biggest laughs is a stunt late in the action featuring President Gagwell that’s like something out of Mission: Impossible.

Of the many supporting players, Latrice Royale is a riot as Barbra, a Stank Rail check-in agent and a champion at throwing shade, who reinvents herself in an endless series of new jobs; Bloom makes a terrific straight man, constantly undermined by her co-workers; Sarah Michelle Geller is a great sport playing a version of herself and leaving everyone she encounters thoroughly unimpressed; Lisa Rinna plays off her bitchy Real Housewives persona; Missi Pyle kills it as a horny divorcée unaware the man she’s hitting on is unconscious; and Drew Droege amuses as a huffy passenger billed as “Rich Gay.”

Some of the extended cameos and celebrity drop-ins are funnier than others, but the one that falls notably flat is Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s in a string of poorly written scenes as a snooty type with an intolerance for babies, seated opposite a pregnant woman (Mayan Lopez). 

The main event here, however, are the queens, most of them relatively new to scripted acting roles. The first-class crew are divinely shady, with willowy Brooke Lynn Hytes making Amber a kind of drag Disney villainess. (Or is that redundant? Aren’t all female Disney villains drag queens?) But the heart of this action-comedy that’s really a high-concept girlfriend movie is Ginger Minj and Jujubee, their characterizations in perfect sync, their rapport endearing and their triumph-of-the-underdog arc something worth rooting for.