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Two 4 One

TWO 4 ONE (Maureen Bradley). 74 minutes. Opens Friday (July 17). See listing. Rating: NN

Where to watch: iTunes


Maureen Bradley’s first feature has an engaging cast and an equally charming premise, but it just misses.

Transgender man Adam (Gavin Crawford) succumbs to his commitment-phobic ex-girlfriend Miriam’s (Naomi Snieckus) insistence that he help her make a baby – she’s got a mail-order pregnancy kit complete with sperm, but wants to make the insemination fun – and they reconnect for a brief affair.

But they wind up getting more than they bargained for, forcing Adam to question his identity and, well, all his choices, actually.

Crawford is excellent as the anxiety-ridden Adam, able to register confusion with just a blink of his sad eyes. You’d never know the actor is one of Canada’s funniest impressionists.

Gabrielle Rose as his supportive mother is a delight. And Snieckus is fine, too, though her hysterical desperation in the first third is so obnoxious, you want Adam to run the other way. 

You also wish they all had better material to work with. The problem, not surprisingly, is the tone. This is supposed to be a comedy, but the struggles of transgendered people are very real and not funny. And writer/director Bradley gives us an easy ending that makes it look like transphobia doesn’t exist.

I’m not looking for a tragedy here, just a bit more complexity.    

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