

The longest 90 minute comedy of 2026 might be the one with the most celebrity cameos, and fewest laughs per cameo.
That’s an apt description of the drag farce “Stop! That! Train!,” a quaint quip-a-thon in the “Airplane!” tradition, with vamped-up vulgarity as its only means up updating that 1980 parody.
A disaster movie about the nation’s first non-stop bullet train facing meteorological peril as it dashes from L.A. to Celebration, Florida, it’s a 700 one-liner, 100 sight gag and have a dozen lip-sync numbers make-work project for legions of the nation’s drag queens, led by their self-annointed queen, Rupaul Charles.
It feels half-amusing at the start but oh-so-old and dated before a half hour has passed.
The tale is set in an alternate reality where this “true story” can boast of a dying “Stank Rail” passenger line contrasted with lush, posh “Glamazonian Express,” replete with tacky gilded, over-decorated cars and service of in the “extreme” range of “wasteful excess.”
“We’re like if Amtrak was gay!”
The train dashes off only for a lone control center dispatcher (Rachel Bloom) to recognize the “Stormaganza” between it and its destination.
“Now boarding, couples that shouldn’t BE together.”
The president (Rupaul), watching her approval numbers slide and up down from “Love Her!” to “Lea Michelle, 2020,” will have to get involved.
“It’s time…to NUKE Russia! Kiddddd-ing!”
And those two cabin hostesses (played by Jujubee and Ginger Minj, ahem) laid off by “Stank” when it closed, now pretending to be Glamazonian staff, will have save the day. They must overcome the Mean Girls hostesses (Brock Hayhoe, Symone and Marcia Marcia Marcia) if this train and its colorlessly colorful passengers and crew (Chris Parnell, a lot less amusing than usual, is the conductor) are to survive.
The passengers include a “grieving” Nicole Ritchie, stuffing a full sized wooden coffin in the overhead luggage rack, Ms. newly-divorced and seriously on-the-make (Missi Pyle), a “Real Housewife” here, a “Modern Family” cast member or onetime “Vampire Slayer” there — Joel McHale in bondage gear and other SAG sight gags, that sort of thing.
The jokes consist of sexual “kink” zingers and run-on lists of pop culture references, “The Real Housewives of the Potomac,” et al, bad pun names (President Judy Gagwell) and “Tell it to me straight!” demands. “Now, tell it to me GAY!”
One running thread through the picture is a general dismissal or simple “dissing” of women by the drag queens, as in nobody in drag or merely mincing recognizes Sarah Michelle Gellar, and they all insult her as a nobody who is too poor to be riding the glam train. You’d think they were all named “Karen.” Or “J.K.”
Natasha Leggero annoys the queen corps of cabin stewardesses no end.
“Sir, please don’t TOUCH me.”
The rat-a-tat-tat nature of the zingers should have produced a lot more winners. As Martin Short observed, par for the course in comedy is if “twenty percent” of what comics cook up earns a laugh.
And while it’s easy to fall in with the whole drag-not-trans vibe of the thing — from the most convincing to the least, every gender bending player is parodying and exaggerating femininity — there’s something very “Airplane!” dated about how all that is handled.
And while one can appreciate the attempt to drag drag out of the culture war headlines and remind us of the overly-made-up, vulgar fun of it all, “Stop! That! Train!” just doesn’t play.
One keeps waiting for something John Waters edgy or shocking or hilarious. But Adam Shankman, who broke out by directing the delightful but tame musical remake of Waters’ “Hairspray,” his screenwriters/gag crafters and his gender bent cast don’t deliver.
Rating: R, sex jokes, drug jokes, profanity aplenty
Cast: Ginger Minj, Jujubee, Brock Hayhoe, Symone, Marcia Marcia Marcia, Rachel Bloom, Missi Pyle, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Latrice Royale, Joel McHale, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicole Ritchie, Lisa Rinna, Charo, Raven Symone, Chris Parnell and Rupaul Charles.
Credits: Directed by Adam Shankman, scripted by Christine Friel and Connor Wright. A Bleecker St. release streaming on Netflix.
Running time: 1:30

