2008 Woodie Awards
Transamerica screams Oscar
Joe McPeak '08
Issue date: 2/24/06 Section: Entertainment
Felicity Huffman and Kevin Zegers star in Transamerica, a touching celebration of true celebration of love among family and the overcoming of social pressures. Bree (Huffman) lives in California and is in the process of completing a sex change operation and thus leave her former self of Stanley behind her. But when she receives a phone call from a young man in a New York prison named Toby (Zegers) who claims that he is her son, her plans suddenly hit a snag.
Transamerica thus establishes itself as a promising film within the first fifteen minutes. Fortunately, the dramatic energy is retained throughout the remainder of the movie, as good acting, meaningful character development, and an exciting plot make it a pure success. Huffman's performance is a particular highlight as we see her character's struggle a difficult situation; she does and excellent job expressing her character's anxieties about being accepted by others when she speaks with her therapist (Elizabeth Pena), or nervously tries to appear feminine while worrying about her hormone pills. The uncertainty in her voice, her fear of telling the truth, and her general nervous demeanor all testify to a truly virtuoso performance on Huffman's part, while Zegers brilliantly executes his character's guarded bitterness and substandard aspirations of porn stardom in his role as Toby.
But what really makes Transamerica an enjoyable film is the plot execution. As Bree and Toby journey across the country, the audience would expect to learn more about them. What they do not expect, however, is to learn about them at the rate in which they do. This is particularly true in the case of Toby, whose character's tragic removal from a good family sets himself up to be gradually unraveled to our amazement as we discover more and more secrets about him and his difficult circumstances. Meanwhile, Bree continues to struggle with the issues regarding her impending operation while trying to figure out how to cope with the fact that she has a son. Setting up the main characters' development in this way allows the film to captivate the audience in a feeling of perpetual intrigue about what Bree and Toby might be hiding from each other, and we cannot help but stay interested about where these issues will take them as the film goes on.
Transamerica thus establishes itself as a promising film within the first fifteen minutes. Fortunately, the dramatic energy is retained throughout the remainder of the movie, as good acting, meaningful character development, and an exciting plot make it a pure success. Huffman's performance is a particular highlight as we see her character's struggle a difficult situation; she does and excellent job expressing her character's anxieties about being accepted by others when she speaks with her therapist (Elizabeth Pena), or nervously tries to appear feminine while worrying about her hormone pills. The uncertainty in her voice, her fear of telling the truth, and her general nervous demeanor all testify to a truly virtuoso performance on Huffman's part, while Zegers brilliantly executes his character's guarded bitterness and substandard aspirations of porn stardom in his role as Toby.
But what really makes Transamerica an enjoyable film is the plot execution. As Bree and Toby journey across the country, the audience would expect to learn more about them. What they do not expect, however, is to learn about them at the rate in which they do. This is particularly true in the case of Toby, whose character's tragic removal from a good family sets himself up to be gradually unraveled to our amazement as we discover more and more secrets about him and his difficult circumstances. Meanwhile, Bree continues to struggle with the issues regarding her impending operation while trying to figure out how to cope with the fact that she has a son. Setting up the main characters' development in this way allows the film to captivate the audience in a feeling of perpetual intrigue about what Bree and Toby might be hiding from each other, and we cannot help but stay interested about where these issues will take them as the film goes on.