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Avg. Critic Score: 66 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
16 Iffy for 16+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 80
    The Hollywood Reporter | Sheri Linden

    Impressively realized on all levels, this transgender spin on the road trip boasts an extraordinary central performance. Read full review

  • 80
    Variety | Eddie Cockrell

    Laugh-out-loud funny, tartly off-color and ultimately touching. Read full review

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    Transamerica provides the frame and the occasion for one of the year's best performances, Felicity Huffman's as a woman trapped in a man's body who's passing for female while awaiting a sex-change operation. Read full review

  • 75
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    The movie's soul is with Huffman. Speaking in a low voice, her posture as stiff as her vocabulary, her eyes a pool of sadness and hope, she turns this small, resonant film into a cry from the heart. Read full review

  • 75
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    What Felicity Huffman brings to Bree is the newness of a Jane Austen heroine. She has been waiting a long time to be an ingenue, and what an irony that she must begin as a mother. Read full review

  • 70
    The New York Times | Dana Stevens

    Transamerica itself does not always live up to its star, but it is touching and sometimes funny, despite its overall air of indie earnestness. Read full review

  • 70
    Washington Post | Ann Hornaday

    If Tucker's road map often feels a little too confining and the screwball comedy too contrived, he can take credit for introducing viewers to a character they have almost certainly never met before. Read full review

  • 67
    Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

    The unintended effect of all the melodramatic complications in Transamerica is, oddly, to distract attention from an understanding of exactly what that courage really costs. Read full review

  • 63
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    Huffman is a woman playing a man playing a woman, which is easily the year's most complicated turn. She does a fine, nuanced job in bringing to life a character that could have become a caricature. Read full review

  • 60
    Los Angeles Times | Kevin Thomas

    Felicity Huffman is such a wonder, at once funny and brave, playing a pre-op male-to-female transsexual in the uneven comedy Transamerica that she sustains several lapses that might otherwise have sunk it. Read full review

View more reviews for Transamerica on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Sensitive portrayal of transsexual OK for older teens.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this sensitive portrayal of a pre-operative transsexual discusses genitals regularly and features brief, nonsexual glimpses of both male and female body parts. A 17-year-old boy is also shown turning a trick with a man and posing provocatively in underwear -- an occasional bare bottom is shown. The teen boy, who has had a troubled childhood, drinks, smokes cigarettes, snorts drugs, and gets involved in the porn industry -- though these situations are all portrayed as negatives.
  • Families can talk about how this movie portrays gender "dysphoria" -- or the sense that one's body does not match one's gender. What made this movie's treatment of a man dressing like a woman different from others you've seen?
  • Did anything about Bree's appearance or manner seem funny? Why or why not? Did the movie change how you think about transsexual people?
The good stuff
  • message true2 Positive messages: This film encourages viewers to be more sensitive to people who are different. It shows how destructive judgmental parents can be to children's mental health. It also encourages a more realistic understanding of family -- that it's messy and complicated -- but still valuable.
  • rolemodels true3 Positive role models: Despite her initial hesitations, Bree takes responsibility for her son, as difficult as it is. She struggles with revealing the truth, but tries her best to take care of him nevertheless. Her strength despite her immense discomfort in the world is admirable. The teen boy is clearly not a role model, but the film makes that clear.
What to watch for
  • violence false2 Violence: Several fistfights and punches. Indication of previous sexual abuse.
  • sex false3 Sex: Discusses genitals regularly, and features brief, nonsexual glimpses of both male and female body parts. One brief scene where a teen boy solicits sex with a trucker -- nothing graphic shown, but it's clear what's going on. In another scene the teen boy unwittingly comes on to Bree and we see his naked body from behind. In another brief scene the teen is in a porn film and gets manipulated just slightly off screen in a matter-of-fact manner.
  • language false3 Language: Infrequent cursing, but everything from "f--k" to "bitch" pops up a few times.
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: The teen boy smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and uses drugs (snorts a powder) several times, though adults discourage this. In the end, Bree chooses to give her son a beer.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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Transamerica Movie Ratings + Reviews

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