Transamerica = Road Trip!

(Blogger's Update: This piece was chosen as an Editor's Pick of the Week Feb. 8-14 at Blogcritics.org. Thanks, editors!)

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.

At first, it seems writer/director Duncan Tucker has fallen victim to the predictable plot points of his chosen genre. However, by putting Bree and Toby through the paces of a road trip, the plot takes a backseat (no pun intended) to character. We get to know Bree throughout their journey - her intelligence, her paternal/maternal side, her flirtations with a friendly Native American, her repression that borders on self-loathing - and Huffman really deserves all the critical acclaim she's receiving. Her awkward, exaggerated physicality and tightly-controlled voice are fascinating, yet she stretches beyond gimmicks to fuse Stanley and Bree into one complex person.

The cliches continue in the last third of the film, where Bree confronts her unaccepting family. Her parents don't understand her, her sister is too self-absorbed to help, past mistakes are used against her, etc. The mother's melodramatic rejection of Bree reflects her own insecurities, as if she's certain that her son's supposed failures reflect her own shortcomings as a mother. Although these familial relationships and tense dinner scenes are cliches at this point, Tucker slyly uses them to show how universal Bree's problems are. Who can't relate to the dysfunctional family? The audience sympathizes with Bree because she's a person with the same kind of problems we all have (unless you come from a functional family, in which case you are the freak).

All in all, Transamerica is satisfying enough, with a serviceable script elevated by an incredible performance by Huffman. Actually, while I am a Reese Witherspoon fan, if Huffman trumps her for the Oscar this year, that would be just fine.

But now I'm going to crank out that script for the Transamerica sitcom. Maybe I could call it "Two and a Half Men." Or "Three's Company." Wait, those are already taken. How about "Desperate Pre-Operative Transsexual Housewives"? Obviously, it's a work in progress. Just like Bree.