Didn’t like this movie. The two main characters go through a series of encounters with colorful characters on a road trip, but the tone of the movie is light and shallow considering the nature of their relationship. Cheap humor and short episodes cover for lackluster dialogue and a lack of character development. I can imagine the movie being pitched as “Sideways” meets “The Bird Cage”, but I don’t think it measures up to either.

Transamerica wasn’t quite what I was expecting it to be. I liked it though. I had been told that it was a movie about someone in the stages of going through gender transformation. I guess I really expected it to be about the whole psychological process of going through a sex change, but it wasn’t.

We joined Bree at a point where those internal issues had mostly been dealt with already. When she actually has her operation it’s anticlimactic, almost beside the point. The movie really is more about the dysfunctional family relationships and the personal struggle for acceptance and respect from ones family members. In this particular case, the person who was struggling for acceptance just happened to be a transsexual.

Unfortunately, the movie was incredibly overdone. The characters were so over the top that none of it was quite realistic or believable. I guess it was suppose to add a comedic element to a serious subject, which it did, but I don’t think it was necessary. Also, while Felicity Huffman did a great job on what was no doubt an acting challenge, part of me really wishes that they had cast either a man or a transsexual in the role of Bree, and not a woman.

I was worried that this was going to embody all the well-meaning-liberal ideas about what trans people are, and it kind of did, but it was clear to me that this was meant to be a portrayal of one particular character who is trans. unfortunately, I’m afraid some people will generalize from the movie to “all transwomen see vaginoplasty as the end-all and be-all of achieving womanhood”. Then again, moreso than the main character’s prissiness and preoccupation with getting the all-important vagina is that she’s a human, with human strengths and weaknesses, and that’s a good thing. But then again, transphobic people probably won’t see this movie anyway. Who knows? Politics aside, it was fun, and made me want to go on a road trip.

But, what’s up with the dialogue spouted by the therapist character? Awful. And maybe the one worst thing about the movie was that it wasn’t quite explained how a character who works as a waitress in a Mexican restaurant and part-time telemarketer can afford to pay for SRS.

It’s interesting how near the very beginning, the main character says to a doctor something like “once I have The Surgery, I will be a real woman,” and near the end, she says to her mom, “you never had a son”. Maybe that’s supposed to imply that she learned something in between. But maybe not.