Bree (Felicity Huffman of “Desperate Housewives”) is a prim preoperative transsexual living in Los Angeles whose life takes an unexpected turn when, mere days before her scheduled reassignment surgery, she learns that her sole heterosexual roll in the hay years earlier yielded a son, Toby (Kevin Zegers), a teenaged street hustler being held for drug possession in a New York City jail. Bree’s therapist (Elizabeth Peña) deems it necessary she confront her past and, to Bree’s dismay, refuses to grant legal permission for the surgery until Bree meets her progeny. Gotta love these Christmas movies, eh! Actually, unseasonable subject matter and too-clever title aside, there is a lot to like about the off-color “Transamerica,” especially Huffman and Zeger’s spirited performances and the engaging story spun by writer-director Duncan Tucker.
So Bree hops a plane to the Big Apple, determined to bail out Toby and return home — alone — as soon as possible. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a movie if that happened, so Bree instead finds herself on a cross-country road trip in a beat-up station wagon with her coke-snorting (yet good-hearted) son, who assumes Bree to be nothing more than an agent from a Christian missionary that rescues street walkers in the hopes of converting them. Much of the film’s laugh out loud humor and dramatic tension is generated via anticipation of the big reveal, which turns out to be somewhat anticlimactic. The finest segment in Tucker’s episodic offering involves a stopover in Phoenix at the home of Bree’s parents (Fionnula Flanagan and Burt Young), who have yet to accept their son Stanley’s “choice” to become a woman. (RATED R. RUNNING TIME: 103 MINUTES)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 2, 2005. Read the original PDF.