I don't know what it says about Transamerica that I'm having more fun thinking about the storyline's possibilities than I am about writing a real review. With a conservative pre-operative transsexual and his/her 17-year-old, drugged-out, hustler son driving across the country, how could this movie be anything less than a feel-good, feel-bad party on wheels? The possibilities provided by this situation are endless. First we have the spin-off sitcom ("One of them shuns curse words, the other snorts coke! Hilarious hi-jinks ensue!"), then the conservative tirades ("I'm so sick of liberal Hollywood shoving their gay agenda down our throats. First they want us to believe cowboys can be gay, now they want us to let transsexuals drive. What's next, drag queen accountants?").
In reality, the movie is surprisingly conventional. Everything you need to know is in the title: Transamerica. It's crossing state lines, cultural lines, gender lines, and familial lines. The first promotional poster for the movie featured the tag line "Life is more than the sum of its parts"; the same could be said about the movie. By mixing the cliches of the road trip and sexually deviant outcast genres, Transamerica uses the former to transcend the latter.
Let's start from the top. Stanley (Felicity Huffman, of TV's Desperate Housewives) is on his way to becoming Bree. He's taking the hormones, he's got the frumpy skirts and jackets, he's had both his jaw and Adam's apple surgically shaved (ouch!). All that's left is the final nip/tuck. Before he can get it done, however, he finds out his one sexual encounter with a woman resulted in a son who's now in jail. Bree's therapist won't approve his surgery until Bree deals with this relevation.
Bree flies to New York, bails out Toby (Kevin Zegers - looking, sounding, and acting like the love-child of Christian Slater and Ian Somerhalder) and, since they're both heading back West, decides to drive back with Toby to save money. However, Bree tells Toby that she's sent from the Church of the Potential Father (get it?) rather than tell him the truth.
The road trip itself is unspectacular. Bree and Toby meet quirky characters, have misunderstandings and awkward encounters (Toby is way too comfortable using his body to get what he wants), and eventually make their way to Bree's family when they run out of money.
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Article comments
1 - Joanie
Exceptional review, Don! I've placed it on the TV/Film Section page as a featured review.
Take a bow, sir.
2 - Christopher Rose
I'd not heard of this movie before encountering this review so thanks for writing it so well, sounds a fun movie.
3 - Don Baiocchi
Thanks, Joanie! Quite a compliment.
Chris, the movie is pretty small. It's doesn't have very wide distribution, but since Huffman has been nominated for Best Actress it might start receiving more attention. And thanks for the kind words.
4 - A.L, Harper
Wow! I'm there for this one!
5 - Jojo
Thanks for such a funny and clever review. On my way to see this movie based SOLEY on your review...
6 - Rodney Welch
You missed all the more obvious cliches. Bree and son cross the country, for heaven's sake, in a CAR, with a STEERING WHEEL. How many times have we seen that one before? And could you believe it when the two of them actually stopped to get gas? I mean, really. Gas. Lord spare from movies with gas stations. When they go to visit her parents, they live in a house, with brick and mortar and carpeting and all that stuff we've seen a million times. They even have a lawn! And the sky above them is blue! And the whole family goes to eat in a restaurant! Cliches, cliches, cliches, piled one of top of the other...