Felicity Huffman gives a performance of her career in this tremendously entertaining road movie about Bree, a trans woman who drives from New York to Los Angeles with her newfound son, Toby. Skilfully directed by Duncan Tucker, ''Transamerica'' is a witty and entertaining comedy, full of great dead-pan dialogues. As Roger Ebert has observed, ''there is a quiet strain of humour throughout "Transamerica," but this is not so much a comedy as an observation about human nature. The movie works because Felicity Huffman brings great empathy and tact to her performance. This is not a person who wants to make a big point about anything. She is persistently and patiently herself. If she had been wilder, more extroverted, the movie might fly off the rails. It is precisely because she is so conventionally sincere that the movie gathers power in deep places while maintaining a relative surface calm. And she manages to maintain her composure even when she finally meets her parents, and especially her unbelievably obnoxious mother (Fionnula Flanagan), who answers for herself the enigma of pre- or post-op by grabbing Bree's crotch. And she looks and acts as if she once courted her husband in exactly the same way.
