REVIEW: Stop! That! Train!

Hello, cinema lovers. Stop! That! Train! is a tongue-in-cheek disaster movie spoof that puts drag queens in cute stewardess uniforms and aims the camera right at them. RuPaul's Drag Race has been highlighting queer lives for over 15 years under the guise of a reality TV competition. A movie spin-off always seemed inevitable. Welcome to the glorious train wreck. This is not A Very Brady Christmas, folks.

Best friends Tess (Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (Jujubee) lose their jobs when their budget train line, Stank Rail, goes under. They talk their way onto the luxury Glamazonian Express, dodging the bitchy head hostess Amber (Brooke Lynn Hytes) and her frosty sidekicks. The girls soon encounter and befriend cute conductor Cal (Brian Jordan Alvarez). Trouble soon brews when a monster storm, cutely named the Stormaganza, looms on the horizon.

Elsewhere, traffic controller Donna Dusk (Rachel Bloom) sounds a storm alarm nobody wants to hear. And finally, in the White House, President Judy Gagwell (RuPaul) is forced to confront old demons from her days with the US Rail Force as the Glamazonian train hurtles to its doom. Not a deep movie plot, just an excuse for 90 minutes of quick-fire sight gags and sharp quips.

Ginger and Jujubee are fantastically camp and warm in their roles. Ginger portrays Tess's ambition with a wink. Jujubee gives DeeDee a cheesy insecurity amid all the chaos. The girls' falling-out subplot really works well because you believe the friendship underneath the acting. RuPaul, who doesn't arrive until at least 40 minutes into the movie, steals the entire film once she appears.

She brings an imperious camp presence and sharp comic timing. There's a reason RuPaul has been a star and icon for 35 years, and she shows her chops here. Latrice Royale makes the very most of every scene she's handed, popping up, throwing a one-liner, and breaking the fourth wall.

Director Adam Shankman, best known for the 2007 musical Hairspray, keeps things moving quickly over a tight 90-minute runtime. The script throws so many jokes at the wall that most of them stick. Some of the songs lag a little, but there's a vibrant, optimistic vibe that lifts everything.

Where this movie falls down is the film's cheap approach to its own visual effects. Some shots of the train and its interiors were generated using AI. In the context of a spoof disaster movie, it kind of works. However, for a film built around the art of drag, utilising AI for its backgrounds feels like a cheat.

One artistic decision comes across as an interesting choice. Every major female role is played by a drag queen. The film never once comments on this or indeed treats it as a running joke. I'm reminded of Divine's performance in Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble.

There's also an actual romance portrayed on screen between DeeDee and Cal. This pairing is shown as a fairly conventional heterosexual pairing, playing it entirely straight. There's plenty of queer coding in the script, but very little that amounts to explicit queer desire between these two characters.

This is a film that lets drag be drag, no explanations needed. It understands and assumes that its audience gets the joke and doesn't need to spell out the technicalities. Viewers preferring the emotional ache of All of Us Strangers or the quiet sincerity of On the Sea should look away.

This is camp and sisterhood personified in a brightly painted pantomime. Stop! That! Train! is a future camp classic. Destined to be group-watched with a few besties. It's a purely silly film of the type we don't get too much of in 2026. Recommended entirely, but don't take any of it seriously.

Stop! That! Train! will be released in UK cinemas from 21 August.