As a pre-optranssexual,Felicity Huffman roams this low-budget family-bonding road movie in search of a much better destination for her talent. Too bad her character, Bree, can’t find a home with those tolerant cowboys of Brokeback Mountain, or among the New England liberals of The Family Stone, or in the swinging London of Breakfast on Pluto, or amid the delicate ladies of Memoirs of a Geisha. Anywhere, in short, but in this film. Cheaply made and even more cheaply imagined, Transamerica meanders across the nation while congratulating itself at every turn for petting platitudes on the head.

Contrivance and cutesiness wrestle to a draw in the writing and direction of Duncan Tucker’s feature debut, which sends Bree from Los Angeles to New York to bail out her 17-year-old street hustler of a son, Toby (Kevin Zegers), while keeping two big secrets from him: (1) She’s a soon-to-be-former man (once called Stanley); and (2) she’s his dad, not a church lady from—cue rim shot, please—the Church of the Potential Father. Pack them in a car for a tour of yokel Americana, and watch as Bree nags Toby not to smoke, not to do drugs, to wear his seat belt, and to learn to better himself. (He wants to act in gay porno films out on the coast; she thinks zoology sounds like a better career choice— not that she’s judging, noooo!) En route we meet nice old black ladies, a gaggle of cheerful Texas post-ops (“We’re not gender-challenged, we’re gender-gifted!”), violent white male sexual abusers, and a noble Indian (Graham Greene) who takes a liking to Bree. Ain’t America grand?

By the time they roll into Phoenix, Bree tells her sitcom-flawed family there that her goal for Toby is “that he’s accepted” as she (as Stanley) was not. At this late juncture, there’s also a lot of belated disclosure about Bree that makes no sense. Ten years of college and she’s a dishwasher? And what’s with her terrible taste in clothing? She’s supposed to be the smartest and most sensible person in the picture, yet she doesn’t express just the tiniest bit of reservation about Toby acting in Cowabunghole? (Admittedly, our brief visit to the set is the funniest thing in Transamerica.)

After Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously and Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game (or even Joely Richardson in Nip/Tuck), Huffman’s performance—perfectly good it itself, but nothing groundbreaking—is secondary to the film’s stunt casting, which will yield Transamerica what little publicity it deserves. She has her Emmy for Desperate Housewives and a safe job on a TV show that has all the craft and wit that Transamerica lacks. You believe in her as a man becoming a woman. Otherwise, you don’t believe in the movie. (R)