Transamerica

It's funny in spots, touching in others and uniformly life-affirming.

Huffman's performance redeems parts of the movie but, until the final 30 minutes, Transamerica too often feels like a journey to nowhere.

Transamerica is a routine road-trip comedy-drama with a twist.

Huffman's performance in Transamerica, as a pre-op male-to-female transsexual coping with the sudden emergence of a long-lost son, is much better than the movie it's in; indeed, she singlehandedly takes Transamerica to a higher plane.

It's a farce with heart, a meditation on identity, family and gender politics that has real faith in its characters -- even when the characters themselves lack it.