COMPLEX, BUT NOT CONVINCING.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

I KNOW LESS than zilch about transgender psychology. So I could be off here, but I still didn't buy most of what ``Transamerica'' offers as a look into the heart and mind of a man who is about to become a woman.

That said, I certainly believe writer-director Duncan Tucker when he says that, for his feature filmmaking debut, he extensively interviewed and observed many transwomen. It's also evident that ``Desperate Housewives'' actress Felicity Huffman studied and rehearsed the mannerisms of such folks.

So I'm happy to acknowledge that they know more about the subject than I do. But that is also what makes ``Transamerica'' often seem off-target. You can sense Tucker and Huffman trying too hard to get it right, and strain is never convincing on screen.

Tucker's TV movie-ish plot doesn't aid in the credibility department. Huffman's Bree is just about to undergo her final gender reassignment surgery when she gets a surprise phone call from New York. Seems the son she never knew she had from a long-ago heterosexual liaison has gotten himself busted for hustling, and is trying to track down his biological father to bail him out.

Bree's L.A. psychiatrist (Elizabeth Pena) refuses to sign off on the genital change until her patient deals with this last issue. Bree reluctantly flies to New York, gets rebellious, self-destructive Toby (Kevin Zegers of Disney's ``Air Bud'' movies) released, and via a series of unlikely circumstances, they wind up driving cross-country back to L.A. together.

Since Bree is characterized as a sourpuss loner, Toby assumes that she's some do-gooder church lady out to save him from a life of sin. She's happy to play into that perception, as the last thing she wants at this point in her life is to take the role of some delinquent's father. Of course, as they bicker from state to state, Bree and Toby start to bond. She learns of his abusive upbringing, he catches on to her anatomical reality (no big deal to a guy like him; it's the true nature of their relationship that's the traumatic secret), and they encounter a not-colorful-enough cast of saintly and devilish types along the way.

When they're forced to visit Bree's mother, monstrously played by Fionnula Flanagan, I suppose we're expected to get some idea of why Bree's the way she is. And I don't mean gender dysphoric, but such a funless fuddy-duddy. That seems too easy to be true, though. Like much else about ``Transamerica,'' demonizing Mom distracts from what could, and should, have been a rare and incisive look at the personal reasons for and social consequences of changing one's sex. Parent-child comedy of errors, no doubt, must usually be a part of that. But it hardly seems like the focal point to build a film such as this around.

When a movie deals with lifestyles that are utterly alien to a viewer, there is always the possibility that we in the audience just can't understand some subtleties and particulars, no matter how accurately portrayed. But I've also seen many films about people whose circumstances were as strange to me as Bree's, if not more so, and that illuminated their lives in a compelling, persuasive and evolving manner.

``Transamerica'' is not one of those.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

TRANSAMERICA - Two and one half stars

(R: sex, drug use, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Felicity Huffman, Kevin Zegers, Fionnula Flanagan, Elizabeth Pena, Graham Greene, Burt Young.

Director: Duncan Tucker.

Running time: 1 hr. 43 min.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: Huffman's turn as a transsexual is sporadically convincing. Most everyone else's in this contrived, otherwise TV-level road movie are not.

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Transsexual Bree (Felicity Huffman) meets the son (Kevin Zegers) she never knew she had from a long-ago heterosexual liaison, in ``Transamerica.''