Presidential candidates take note: If you ever want an effectively simple campaign slogan, you could do worse than this: “SHE FUN!”
That’s the slogan that got President Judy Gagwell — aka RuPaul — elected, and if it puts a smile on your face, it’s a good sign that lots of other, er, gags from Gagwell and others in “Stop! That! Train!,” a delightfully absurd disaster-flick spoof with a wildly impressive joke-per-minute ratio, will be up your alley, too.
Especially when RuPaul is on the screen, in presidential pantsuits recalling Hillary Rodham Clinton or Kamala Harris. A memorable visual moment in director Adam Shankman’s film is when RuPaul’s prez is being briefed, during a White House corridor walk-and-talk a la “West Wing” and “Veep,” while her chief aide (a hilariously sycophantic Matt Rogers) is also gravely piling things into her arms. He starts with briefing papers but moves on to ridiculous items like a bowling pin, a board game and a stuffed animal.
Even funnier is when the president, seeing that her aide has bad news to impart, asks: “Tell it to me straight.” He informs her of the catastrophic storm — the “Stormaganza!” — in the path of a runaway train full of passengers. Then she says: “Tell it to me gay.” And he just screams.
But most of the screen time is devoted to the train, and so we begin our tale with the real stars of this buddy film — the sweet duo of Tess and DeeDee (Ginger Minj and Jujubee, both alums of RuPaul’s “Drag Race” universe).
These ladies are longtime friends, who attended train hostess academy together and had dreams of seeing the world — important things like the Grand Canyon and the Dakotas, “Fanning AND Johnson!” But they ended up stuck at a low-rent company called Stank Rail.
Well, until now. When we meet them, they’ve just been handed pink slips. Thinking fast, they sneak their way onto the luxury Glamazonian Express, filled with very rich people and, as announced in the boarding call, “couples who shouldn’t be traveling together.”
The journey soon turns into an amalgam of “Airplane!” — the conductor looks a lot like Leslie “Don’t call me Shirley!” Nielsen, a star of that 1980 classic — and “Mean Girls,” where the three popular hostesses are just like Regina George and her friends. Only their names are Amber, Alli and, in a wonderful spelling gag — Ayshleiygh. Yes, Ayshleiygh.
Needless to say, they’re based in first class. Tess and DeeDee take care of the coach passengers, who include a peasant woman washing clothes on a washboard. (Also a nun — a la “Airplane!”)
The safety announcement is, not surprisingly, a saucy song-and-dance number. One memorable rhyme combines “There ain’t no TSA” with “We’re like if Amtrak was gay.” You get the picture.
But what of the Stormaganza? Well, for that we’re taken to Train Headquarters, where the only person who takes anything seriously is feisty Donna Dusk (Rachel Bloom), who tries to warn that the train must be stopped. For one thing, it’s on track to crash in an area that contains — bear with us here — a nuclear plant, a hotel for dogs, and “the home of beloved actress Laurie Metcalf.”
“Not Laurie Metcalf!” Donna’s fellow worker gasps.
Meanwhile, President Gagwell needs to discover who she really is. Is she brave enough to guide the country through this crisis? And will she need to press either of the panic buttons on her Oval Office desk? One of them says “Game Over” and apparently leads to a nuclear strike.
Which, in a few letters, perfectly captures “Stop! That! Train!,” a movie so chock full of gags — the screenplay is by Connor Wright and Christina Friel — that the blooper reel at the end feels slow.
But we told you this was a buddy film. There’s usually a moment in buddy films where the friends separate for some reason. And when Tess and DeeDee do, the film becomes something of a dark, somber Ingmar Bergman movie.
Of course it doesn’t. The gags never stop. Not every one of them soars, but enough do that you’ll likely just be giggling for 90 minutes.
As the president might say, “They fun!”
“Stop! That! Train!,” a Bleecker Street release, has been rated R “for sexual material, language, some drug material and brief nudity.” Running time: 92 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
