Joel on Film

There are a lot of fun and funny ideas in Stop! That! Train!, a parody of the transportation disaster movie in the tradition of a certain early 1980s effort from which this movie directly cribs a quote at one point. It’s important to recognize the effort involved in throwing as many gags and jokes and jabs and one-liners and pop-culture references at the wall to see what sticks, and that happens a lot in director Adam Shankman’s spirited and generally good-natured comedy. It’s also important to acknowledge when it results in an inconsistently patchwork effort, as has happened in this case.

It has been a while, by the way, since a screenplay has seemed almost entirely inconsequential to what has been happening onscreen, but this is almost certainly one of those cases in which its voluminous cast was just riffing or ad-libbing for the purpose of breaking the concentration of their screen partner (or three). The end credits confirm that suspicion by featuring a running tally of bloopers and addenda with the air of a loosey-goosey production and an ensemble who weren’t too concerned about how many hours of the day they would spend shooting this material. The barest of thin plots threads all this together, mostly driven by a very specific casting coup.

The film might have been directed by Shankman and written by Christina Friel and Connor Wright, but it was also definitely devised by RuPaul Charles, the reality television personality and occasional actor, who here stars as the President of the United States. The Commander in Chief is faced with a potential disaster in the form of “Stormaganza,” a once-in-a-lifetime super-storm that threatens the lives aboard the Glamazonian Express, a high-speed rail traveling the length of the country. The only ones who seem halfway capable of saving the day are the team of stewardesses aboard the train, but unfortunately, two of them are locked in a stern rivalry with a trio of others.

The heroines are named Tess and DeeDee, played respectively by Ginger Minj and Jujubee—drag performers and, naturally, former contestants on the reality show hosted by Charles. If nothing else, the movie provides a solid argument in favor of entrusting comedic roles to the likes of contestants on that show, because both performers (but especially Jujubee) are especially funny and likable here as slightly dim-witted stewardesses who abandon the dregs of their occupation at the “Stank Rail” for the more glamorous life aboard the Express. Obviously, the movie will eventually force a conflict between them, but that only comes about in the form of a highly amusing psychic slap fight with hilariously violent consequences.

The other stewardesses are played by Brooke Lynn Hytes, Marty Lauter and Symone, who each play a gloriously vindictive villain as dumb as they are conniving. The movie mostly relegates them to a series of musical numbers that sort of fit the energy of the whole piece but kind of stick out for not-so-positive reasons. That might have to do with the fact that Ginger and Jujubee are basically given the best material by quite a margin (though Chris Parnell is very funny as the train conductor, a foul-mouthed rendition of Peter Graves’ character in that 1980 comedy, before the movie rudely disposes of him for no apparent reason).

Once that slim scenario has been devised and established, everything shifts into autopilot mode (if you’ll forgive the joke) and the name of the game is coming up with as many random jokes as possible with very little present to drive the momentum. It mostly involves an absolute avalanche of cameos, some of which are pretty funny (Sarah Michelle Gellar as a “famous actress” recognized by no one, Jesse Tyler Ferguson as a passenger with a feral aversion to birthed babies) and quite a lot of which are simply random (Nicole Richie as a glamorous daughter whose recently deceased mother’s coffin keeps appearing in impossible places, Natasha Leggero as an ornery passenger always complaining to somebody on the other end of a phone). The balance eventually tips in favor of the latter, which also extends to some of the more prominent supporting/glorified-cameo roles, such as Rachel Bloom, who seems a bit lost in the weeds as a train traffic controller.

It’s more than a little unfortunate that Stop! That! Train!, which positions itself as a legitimate parody of a kind Hollywood once delivered with regularity before favoring a more specific variety, doesn’t work as well or land as humorously as it could. The pieces are there, but so are a number of bald patches, leading to a too evenly matched ratio of hits to misses.

Rating: ** (out of ****)