STOP! THAT! TRAIN! Barrels onto Big Screens, Serving Camp Comedy Gold

For decades, mainstream film has borrowed liberally from drag, queer culture, Ballroom aesthetics, and camp sensibilities, often without meaningfully centering the artists who built those worlds. STOP! THAT! TRAIN! feels like a welcome shift.

While drag performers have long lit up indie films and queer cult classics like Girls Will Be Girls, Cherry Pop, Hurricane Bianca, Die Mommie Die!, and, of course, the legendary collaborations between John Waters and Divine, mainstream Hollywood has been far slower to hand drag artists the keys to a wide theatrical comedy.

That distinction matters to Symone. “I think STOP! THAT! TRAIN! is important because it’s another way of humanizing us,” she reflects. “We’re the stars of the film. We’re not the butt of the joke. We’re making the jokes. We’re setting up the humor. We’re leading the story.”

That message lands with even greater urgency as drag performers and LGBTQ communities continue facing political attacks across the country. “They’re trying to take drag away and trying to silence us and our art,” Symone says. “So I just think it’s important that people see us as artists and as humans.”

The film makes that point while being absolutely ridiculous. It is genuinely a laugh-a-minute comedy that gleefully commits to its own absurdity. The buddy-comedy dynamic between Jujubee and Ginger Minj gives the film its emotional engine, grounding the escalating chaos with genuine chemistry and warmth. If A View From the Top and Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar had a gloriously queer lovechild barreling toward disaster, this would most definitely be it.

There are musical numbers. There are outrageous cameos. There is a loose scorpion creating the kind of escalating mayhem that evokes Snakes on a Plane. Missi Pyle absolutely understands the assignment as a hilariously horny divorcée, while Latrice Royale repeatedly popping up in entirely different jobs becomes one of the film’s most delightful running gags. Even the visual comedy hits hard, with a fried brakes gag that practically demands a spit take.

For all its outrageous camp, however, STOP! THAT! TRAIN! does have heart. Symone points to friendship as one of the film’s emotional throughlines, particularly in the central dynamic between Jujubee’s and Ginger Minj’s characters. “There’s friendship on the line here,” she reveals. “They come into this as best buddies, really, and they have to navigate this situation together.”

She also sees a message about resilience and collective survival. “You may not get along with them, you may not like them, but you have to work together to get through a situation,” she says of the adversarial dynamic among Ayshleiygh, her character, and Jujubee and Ginger Minj’s central duo.

That emotional grounding helps explain why the comedy lands so effectively. “With drag, we get to have a little bit more fun,” Symone explains. “It’s kind of a way to disarm the audience.”

Her sharp observation is that, while we all know that comedy lowers defenses, drag lowers them even further. “We get to sit down and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re actually saying underneath the joke and the absurdity of this film,’” she explains.

For Symone, the experience of making the film alongside RuPaul Charles was transformative. “I’ve loved Ru since I was a kid,” she says, “so this opportunity meant the world to me to be in a film with her and acting alongside her and across from her.”

It also expanded her sense of possibility. “It made me realize that the sky’s the limit.” She quickly ups the ante, adding, “We can go past that, we can go to space now.”

More importantly, she hopes that STOP! THAT! TRAIN! will open doors for the next generation of queer creatives. “I hope there are more films led by us in and out of drag,” she says. “Why can’t we have more of these films?”

And if mainstream audiences are somehow still not ready for a drag-led mainstream film after 20 years of RuPaul’s Drag Race? “If they’re not ready, then they’re going to get ready,” she quips bluntly. And, honestly? Fair.

STOP! THAT! TRAIN! arrives in theaters nationwide on June 12, making it an auspiciously perfect Pride Month movie outing for the gays, girls, theys, thems, and yes, even your straight friends. As Symone puts it, “This is a movie for everyone.”