Stop! That! Train! (dir. Adam Shankman)

by Jack Martin | Aug 18, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 90 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 21 August 2026

WHO’S IN STOP! THAT! TRAIN!?

Ginger Minj, Jujubee, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Latrice Royale, Marty Lauter, Monét X Change, Symone, RuPaul Charles, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicole Richie, Raven-Symoné, Michelle Visage, Chris Parnell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Charo, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Natasha Leggero, Drew Droege, Joel McHale, Rachel Bloom, Guy Branum, Daniel Franzese, Riki Lindhome, Mayan Lopez, Missi Pyle, Jerry O’Connell, June Diane Raphael, Lisa Rinna, Jai Rodriguez, Matt Rogers, Paul Scheer, Nicole Sullivan, Angeria Paris VanMicheals

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Adam Shankman (director, producer), Christina Friel and Connor Wright (writers), Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, Tom Campbell and RuPaul Charles (producers), Jacques Brautbar (composer), Luka Bazeli (cinematographer), Joshua Kirchmer (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A train rides into danger when it enters a deadly storm…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON STOP! THAT! TRAIN!?

For decades, Hollywood has tried and largely failed to replicate the near-perfect formula that went into the all-timer spoof comedy Airplane!, a film by the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team that still causes people to laugh their heads off at the perfectly timed visual gags, the intricately absurd wordplay, and the committed performances by actors intentionally treating the wacky material with the straightest of faces. But in all that time, nobody could have predicted that all it took to even come close to recapturing that film’s zany spirit was to turn towards the drag community, which thanks to shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race has become its own genre of lively and campy entertainment.

Of course, that is not to say that Stop! That! Train! – from director/producer Adam Shankman – is anywhere on the same level of comedic genius as Airplane! is. Its joke rate is a lot more hit-or-miss, the performers are perhaps a bit too aware of what kind of movie they’re in, and even the production quality itself is more akin to something you’d find on streaming than a theatrical release. But with all of that said, there is a wild sense of charm in how every single person involved – many of them coming from various seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, including RuPaul herself – is just going for broke in trying to make the audience laugh, which they successfully do on quite a few occasions, enough to make this overwhelmingly silly movie a good enough time for the overall enthusiasm of that classic comedy to be revitalised for the present-day world.

As you can probably tell by that heavily emphatic title, Shankman’s film swaps airplanes for high-speed trains, with much of the film taking place on the fancy Glamazonian Express that offers comfort and luxury for all its first-class passengers. It’s also where best friends Tess (Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (Jujubee) have snuck on board disguised as Glamazonian stewardesses, after being made redundant from their much lesser quality train line Stank Rail going out of business, and they quickly draw the ire of snooty Glamazonian staff and passengers. However, they may be everyone’s only hope when the train darts full speed ahead into a massive storm – one so big it comes with its own categorisation: “Stormaganza” – and with both the brakes not working and Conductor Davenport (Chris Parnell) incapacitated, they must find a way to calm the passengers and slow the train down before it can reach its destination of a nuclear site located right next to a shelter for abandoned dogs and the home of beloved actor Laurie Metcalf. Oh, and if that plot wasn’t wacky or fabulous enough, RuPaul is also in the film as US President Judy Gagwell, a former train-centric militant with a hilariously grim traumatic past.

It’s all quite ridiculous, a fact that Stop! That! Train! is fully aware of from its opening montage onwards, made up of various real and toy trains throughout history (to where I’m genuinely surprised that they didn’t include Thomas the Tank Engine in that montage). From there, Shankman’s film quickly establishes a heightened world where, much like Airplane! or many of the other ZAZ line of parody movies, everything from the background actors to certain signage in the foreground is comedically exaggerated to the nth degree, which the director and his widespread cast members – also including Rachel Bloom as a put-upon train command centre employee, and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a consistently abused version of herself – charmingly have as much fun with as they can. The film gets some good laughs from the delivery alone of certain one-liners and visual gags that knowingly play into how silly everything is, much of it coming from leads Ginger Minj and Jujubee who share a fun and likeable chemistry as they sass their way through a script filled with intentionally nonsensical disaster movie tropes.

The movie earns more laughs than it doesn’t, although they do begin to run out of steam as it glides towards a reasonably safe conclusion. There are also a few recurring jokes and characters throughout that fall a little flat, many of them involving supporting players like Missi Pyle and Jesse Tyler Ferguson who do what they can with the one note that Shankman has given them. Speaking of whom, the director doesn’t have a sense of artistic ambition in his filmmaking here, with much of the film being statically shot on sets with green-screen backgrounds that are, especially for a comedy, quite dull to look at. He also relies on his actors delivering some crudely over-the-top facial expressions in moments of comedic desperation, which can make it feel a bit more obnoxious to sit through when you can tell they’re trying too hard to be funny, whereas part of the genius of Airplane! was that it cast actors more known at the time for serious roles like Robert Hays and Leslie Nielsen to deliver their jokes as though they were in a regular drama.

It’s definitely flawed, and not as much of a comedic juggernaut as its spiritual predecessors, but it’s hard to deny that Stop! That! Train! is a good bit of silly fun for anyone that misses the classic ZAZ style of all-out comedy that Shankman, for all his lack of ambition, does well enough to emulate.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Stop! That! Train! is a wildly silly but mostly entertaining disaster spoof that evokes the spirit of Airplane! with its heavily exaggerated comedy and amusing performances, though the hit-or-miss joke rate and unambitious filmmaking still leave it thousands of miles beneath the likes of that comedy classic.