Justin Timberlake plays a former niece who cares for a child in the Fisher Stevens drama.
Just a few months ago, Juno Temple helped make the upcoming Apple TV + service its first must-see: Ted Lasso, an almost perfect comedy series that radiates decency and hope in a world that … well, you was there. She is very much on the other side of the coin in her reunion with the streaming service, playing a drug-addicted single woman who is so negligent that her child is left in the care of a newly released criminal, actually a step in the right direction is.
That ex-con is the eponymous hero of Fisher Stevens’s Palmer, and as played by Justin Timberlake, he’s almost compelling enough to make you ignore how many times protecting a child has solved problems or horrible adults on screen. A capable cast helps the photo beyond its formulaic nature (brings out a drunken connection and a bit of language, and it’s a thorough family movie, at least for families of non-homophobes), but does not make it a must see not in any way. For fans of the Timberlake actor’s record, which has had its ups and downs in commercial and artistic terms, it’s more proof that a fruitful second career can await the pop star if he wants to.
Timberlake’s Eddie Palmer is a former hometown hero whose football career ended after just a year of college football. Bad choices and a lack of painkillers led him to jail, but he did his time without complaints; back to Louisiana, he is willing to start below to make a new life.
He moves in with the grandmother who raised him. Vivian (June Squibb) insists on going to church and has no plans to entangle her son: Sam (Ryder Allen), the son of the woman who rents a trailer in her side garden, needs most of her energetic mothers. Shelly from Temple loves Sam, but is not equipped to juggle an addiction, an angry boyfriend (an underutilized Dean Winters) and a child. She often disappears for days or weeks, leaving Vivian with his de facto family. Shelly is on a long one of these bows when Vivian dies.
As is customary in these stories, Palmer does not want to be saddled with childcare. He may have even been a little disgusted by this child in particular. Sam wears berets and plays with dolls; princesses is his “favorite thing in the whole world.” “Do you know that you are a boy?” Palmer asked him early. But to see others harass the child is all that is needed to put Palmer aside his annoyance. It’s a city with school bullies and gossip on Sunday morning, and Cheryl Guerriero’s text shows admirable self-control to make our own comparisons between the situation of the criminal and the gender nonconformist.
Palmer gets it. Since the only job in town he can do is as a schoolteacher, he has to keep an eye on Sam day and night. His attentiveness is inevitably noticed by Sam, the beautiful, divorced teacher, Miss Maggie (Alisha Wainwright), who voluntarily helps her with Sam’s care. The two adults deserve some form of minor award because they spend just as much time on it as pretending together that they are only interested in taking care of the child.
Timberlake plans a credible line from the tacit self-protection of a prisoner through the humility of freedom, with limits to the dawn of a possible new life. Palmer is not a very well-drawn character, but he really feels enough to fight Sam when it’s time – both physically, while facing bullying when the boy can not, and legally, once the required challenge for his supervision. Stevens does not play the tear-jerker card shamelessly, as many of his predecessors did in similar cases. But the film has little trouble getting us on Palmer’s side, hoping the forces that are there will come and make him a father.
Production companies: Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Hercules Film Fund, Rhea Films
Distributor: Apple TV +
Cast: Justin Timberlake, Ryder Allen, Alisha Wainwright, Juno Temple, June Squibb, Lance E. Nichols, Jesse C. Boyd, Wynn Everett, Stephen Louis Grush
Director: Fisher Stevens
Screenwriter: Cheryl Guerriero
Producers: Charlie Corwin, Sidney Kimmel, Daniel Nadler, John Penotti, Charles B. Wessler
Executive Producers: Terry Dougas, Jared Goldman, Cheryl Guerriero, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis
Director of Photography: Tobias A. Schliessler
Production Designer: Happy Massee
Costume Designer: Megan Coates
Editor: Geoffrey Richman
Composer: Tamar-kali
Cast: Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee
R, 111 minutes