{"id":636945,"date":"2026-06-13T17:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/636945\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T17:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T17:14:09","slug":"a-movie-for-everyone-not-just-drag-race-fans-stars-of-drag-comedy-stop-that-train-on-making-the-summers-funniest-film-comedy-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/636945\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A movie for everyone, not just Drag Race fans\u2019: stars of drag comedy Stop! That! Train! on making the summer\u2019s funniest film | Comedy films"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drag queens are never more striking than when they\u2019re set against an everyday background. \u201cKristen Stewart is a buoy \u2026 \u201d the Laotian American beauty Jujubee muttered spacily to herself in the hallway of Bleecker Street Media\u2019s New York office, reading out the tag-line of a framed poster for the 2024 sci-fi\/romance Love Me<\/a>. The former RuPaul<\/a>\u2019s Drag Race contestant and star of the new disaster-comedy Stop! That! Train! was lingering outside an office cubicle in a structured blazer and fishnets as an attentive PR took her order for lunch. By that point she\u2019d been in full wardrobe and make-up all day fielding press, including a mid-morning stop with her castmates at NBC\u2019s Today with Jenna & Sheinelle.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d heard Jujubee and her co-star Ginger Minj before I saw them, laughing like glamorous hyenas from another room. When they made an entrance, they did so in coordinated cheetah print looks, greeting me with the kind of mega-watt smiles that told me I was now their audience. I was impressed by how \u201con\u201d they were, but could imagine it was taxing to keep up. How had the whirlwind of press been for them? \u201cIt\u2019s been a lot of work but it doesn\u2019t feel like it,\u201d Ginger admitted. \u201cThe tour has absolutely mimicked the making of the movie.\u201d \u201cWe have to schedule our sleep,\u201d Jujubee added as she slowly began to peel off some cumbersome press-on nails. \u201cBut I\u2019m so high on life and all of us have been able to stay in the moment, and live in this stormaganza of press.\u201d They immediately started cackling again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Stop! That! Train! is set in a parallel America where railways are the dominant mode of transportation, \u201cstormaganzas\u201d are recognized (if infrequent) extreme weather events, and seemingly everyone is an amoral maniac dedicated to acting out on their worst behavior. Even if you don\u2019t believe that the premise of \u201cRuPaul as president of the United States\u201d should be played for laughs, the drag queen-fronted comedy by Adam Shankman develops such an infectious, full-throated strain of humor that it\u2019s very hard not to succumb to its charm. The movie works in the same tradition of satire as The Naked Gun<\/a>, Scary Movie<\/a>, and Airplane!<\/a>, where conventional logic matters less than sustained world-building and rapid-fire joke-telling. It\u2019s a format that lends itself uniquely well to RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race, a reality show that dedicates whole episodes to extended parody and where glamour and spoof coexist together on the cellular level.<\/p>\n

The film follows Tess (Ginger) and DeeDee (Jujubee) who become stewardesses on luxury train line, Glamazonian, after they\u2019re suddenly laid off from Stank Rail. Natural disaster, presidential politics, musical numbers, paranormal activity and Sarah Michelle Gellar ensue. The screenplay by Christina Friel and Connor Wright is incredibly busy, clocking an astonishing rate of gags per minute that only becomes fully clear after multiple watches. Even if not all of the punchlines land, the constantly zipping dialogue means that you don\u2019t have to wait long until the next massive one-liner. The extended gag of legendary queen Latrice Royale taking on every job in America, the call-and-response hilarity of \u201cgive it to me straight\/now give it to me gay\u201d and the blink-or-miss-it randomness of Raven-Symon\u00e9 playing a character called \u201cShayna Gefilte-Manischewitz\u201d are woven together like comic kevlar.<\/p>\n

Marty Lauer, AKA Marcia Marcia Marcia, Brooke Lynn Hytes and Raven-Symon\u00e9 in Stop! That! Train! Photograph: World of Wonder\/Bleeker Street<\/p>\n

Despite how mainstream and award-winning Drag<\/a> Race is, and how well-received auxiliary shows like AJ and the Queen and We\u2019re Here have been, Stop! That! Train! still feels like a major crossover event for the franchise. It is a vehicle that\u2019s pointedly aimed at a much wider public rather than their established cult audience. \u201cI was very clear with [the producers] that I was making a movie for everyone, not just Drag Race fans,\u201d Shankman clarified. \u201cThis movie doesn\u2019t exist without Drag Race but you could say that about the off-shoots of characters from Saturday Night Live: they\u2019re their own thing, and we\u2019re our own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

After guest judging on Drag Race, Shankman was presented with a script by producer Randy Barbato and asked if he could take a look at it. In its original form, the script featured one radical difference: it was going to be set onboard a plane. \u201cI already have a target on my back,\u201d Shankman remembered thinking to himself: \u201dI don\u2019t want to remake Airplane!\u201d Instead he suggested it be set on a train, transplanting the same sense of life-or-death urgency to one of the most boring and dependable forms of civilian transit. Thus unexpected turbulence, falling oxygen masks, and the threat of crash landings loom large in the background. As President Judy Gagwell, RuPaul<\/a> plays a battle-tested member of the US army\u2019s now-shuttered Rail Force Division, haunted by the young girl\u2019s life she couldn\u2019t save in a series of extended \u201chot flashbacks\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the lore of Drag Race, \u201cGlamazonian\u201d is a company that\u2019s rivaled only by Acme in terms of comic corporate malfeasance. Thus the job of \u201crail stewardess\u201d means aiding and abetting the bad behavior of their wealthy clientele. As the train departs the station, the bitchy, glamorous trio of first class attendants (played by Brooke Lynn Hytes, Marty Lauter and Symon\u00e9), even perform a musical number encouraging users to get their drugs out since they aren\u2019t subject to TSA.<\/p>\n

The Stop! That! Train! screening at NewFest Pride in New York last month. Photograph: Oliver Rodriguez\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

For a screenplay so air-tight with jokes, the cast manages to inhabit the world of the film incredibly well. As a duo, Ginger and Jujubee bring an easy if chaotic chemistry to their performances that they\u2019ve honed in numerous theatrical productions together. Adjusting their dynamic on film, however, came with some challenges. \u201cAdam told us, you two are not in a comedy, everybody else can be but you\u2019re in a drama,\u201d Jujubee reflected. \u201cI\u2019ll never forget it,\u201d Ginger added, \u201che kept calling us \u2018Lucy and Ethel\u2019 for the first couple of days because we would do [overblown] reactions. It [was] just those theatrical instincts kicking in but we very quickly learned what level he wanted and where we could play with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

By committing to the seriousness, the duo were also able to leave their mark on the film with some glorious improvisation. One of the film\u2019s most memorable sequences is an extended fight scene between the two that takes place roughly 40 feet apart from each other, as each queen goes through the motion of invisibly hair-pulling, gut-punching, and nipple-twisting the other. \u201cWe were so tired that we were just doing things to make each other laugh,\u201d said Ginger \u201cAnd then it clicked in our head that this could be funny.\u201d \u201c[The first time we did it] there was no reaction. It\u2019s just dead silent. And then a couple seconds later, [Shankman] comes up and goes, \u2018OK, that was good. Let\u2019s do it again. Make it bigger. We\u2019re like, \u2018Bigger!\u2019 We haven\u2019t heard that at all this time!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey took very good care of us,\u201d Symon\u00e9 reflected. \u201cThey were like, \u2018we want you to look great standing on camera, but we wanted to be comfortable for you, because you\u2019re going to be in heels. Having Adam as the leader made our job a lot easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really great because we had a director who understood drag,\u201d Brooke Lynne Hytes concurred, \u201cso we were like, we never had to worry about any of those little things [you] usually have to worry about when you\u2019re working with someone who\u2019s never worked with the drag queen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ginger Minj and Jujubee in Stop! That! Train! Photograph: World of Wonder\/Bleeker Street<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that I\u2019m left with was how heroic these actors are,\u201d Shankman explained, \u201cthese guys come into work in the morning and then have to become someone else, and then that other person becomes someone else. It\u2019s this additional layer of sort of mind bending that was really incredible. Also do not discount how uncomfortable it is to be in drag, and how uncomfortable they are for 12 hours while giving these really free, funny performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI make movies because of the joy of making them. There\u2019s nothing fun about releasing a movie\u201d Shankman admitted, \u201cI mean, just the amount of internet hostility that you have to put yourself in the crosshairs of \u2026 \u201d Within days of meeting, the film was in hot water over whether the producers had cut corners by using AI for special effects, which Shankman denied in a statement posted to Instagram<\/a>. Still, the intensity that\u2019s surrounded that question feels like the dovetailing of two distinct anxieties: humans getting replaced with machine intelligence and a lingering anxiety about the trade-offs that a film steeped in subculture would make for its shot at the big time. Stop! That! Train! is a scrappy movie that was made for a small budget over the course of 19 days. I found the film somewhat cheesy in parts but couldn\u2019t detect anything that felt fishy or compromised. If anything, I was taken by the sheer human effort that went into it.<\/p>\n

Would Shankman work with drag queens in the future? \u201cIf somebody presents me with [a strong script], hell yeah, I would be happy to work with them on more serious projects because I think that the opportunity to use this pool of talent to tell more human stories is right there. It\u2019s the orchard and we could just pick the fruit.\u201d<\/p>\n