22 Family Movies Not To Watch With Your Family On Thanksgiving

Transamerica

This is a roadtrip/buddy film like no other. It’s lighter than a lot of the movies on the list, though it still has moments you’ll be glad to be sitting alone wallowing during. We follow Bree, a transgender woman very close to being approved by her doctors for gender reassignment surgery. As she prepares for her new body, and what she hopes will be a new life, she gets a call asking for Stanley, the name to which she was born. It’s a young man in New York hoping to be bailed out of prison by- prepare yourself- his birth father, Stanley. Bree immediately can’t deal and rushes to her therapist for comfort, where she’s told that her surgery won’t be approved until she deals with the traumas of her past- new son and all.

For the majority of the movie, after Bree flies to New York to bail him out under the guise of working with a Christian missionary, we watch the two of them get to know each other. Bree is, indeed, a Christian, and quite conservative. Toby still sneaks drugs, is relatively uncivilized, and, OH YEAH, has no idea the woman beside him is actually his father. Their relationship is sweet and confusing, but their respect and love for each other grows to be undeniable. We have so much hope for Bree’s future, and genuinely can’t help but root for Toby to be strong and accepting enough to be a part of it. It’ll make you think a lot about your own family, birth and otherwise, and the lengths you might’ve had to go to in order to accept and love everyone FOR their differences and not in spite of them. And though it was only 2005 and we STILL have so far to go, to see how much the world, and even just the language, has shifted to today’s far more trans-inclusive rhetoric and behavior is a fascinating sociocultural layer of this film that will only grow more interesting as the years go on.

Especially avoid if: You’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and maybe not ready to accept it fully yet. If you’re struggling with your sexuality, watching a movie about someone else whose family, and the culture at large, doesn’t necessarily accept her yet might hit too close to home.