Wwithin the first fifteen minutes of Apple TV +’s Palmer, something clicks in, a sense of overwhelming familiarity, an inner voice silently realizing: ‘Ohhh, it’s that Movie. “In this particular case, that film is the one about the ex-con who has to do well with the help of a cute kid, a solid story that is often told. It’s not that overheating leftovers can not provide a filling meal, but when done with such low energy and with such low wattage central performance, it’s hard to see the point. Why not, make a mistake, rather tell a new story?
To give screenwriter Cheryl Guerriero some credit, the formula is slightly adaptable and it’s one that Palmer gives the best, probably only, vaguely interesting moments. While the titular character, played by Justin Timberlake, is every icy movie-ex with an easily turned frown you can think of, the kid who melts him is a sexually unhappy boy living in the trailer next door, an intrigue untold dynamics, but one that promises far more than is delivered. Palmer, straight out of jail for a violent crime and directly into his grandmother’s house, played by June Squibb, is eager to start his life.
But the city he returned to is not quite so ready, and Palmer’s good intentions quickly disappear. In between drinking and neglecting, he forges an unlikely friendship with Sam, played by newcomer Ryder Allen, an eight-year-old boy whose choice of dolls over cars painted him as an outcast at school and at home. When Sam’s mother, played by Juno Temple, runs away with her violent boyfriend, Palmer is suddenly left in control of him while also juggling an emerging romance with his teacher, played by Alisha Wainwright.
In the hands of actor-director Fisher Stevens (whose work behind the camera tended to be non-fiction), Palmer plays like a fourth-rate Oscar bid from the early period, all washed out cinematography and guitar picking score, the kind of the film that would aim to break big at Sundance with critics calling the main performance ‘revealing’. Maybe in another universe with a better screenplay and a different star, that might have been the case. But instead, Palmer is rather a kind of airplane movie ‘I’ve seen all the others, so sure’, kind of capable enough, but it never reaches one of the highs and lows. The story is one we can predict, almost to every last rhythm, which again would not necessarily be a big problem if told with a little more fire, but it’s all so calm, so third gear, that it frustrating is hard to feel even the slightest emotion.
Where the film briefly becomes almost alive, it’s Sam, a boy who plays more comfortably with toys traditionally meant for girls and, if allowed, also dresses that way. Even if Guerriero cannot figure out the nuts and bolts of his relationship with Palmer (a sharper text could lay a more credible foundation in the first act to be more through the third then), there are effective moments that bias show what children face who do not meet the gender norms, which we still attach to them. It’s told in broad outline, but then stories like this, in order to reach a broader, judgmental audience that may need a bit of spoon feeding, and it should be sometimes, and although I longed for more content and knottiness from the film, has, it is a small step in the right direction with respect to a specific form of representation.
It would have been understandable, and perhaps merciful, if Timberlake had decided to call it a non-Trolls actor, after his death-defying turn as a sailor lifeguard who dreams of being a playwright in Woody Allen’s equally wrong reviews Wonder Wheel. Three years later and a dirty starring role in a more stripped-down drama should finally conquer him at a more mature stage of his career. But Palmer is the kind of character made for attractive actors who associate depth with beard length, rather a film type than a living, breathing human being. Timberlake is about good, he goes through the motions with the same plodding as the movie around him, never really bad, but never good enough, a performance that we can not convince again that live action suits him well.
Despite the flashes of something more challenging, Palmer is a movie content to play it safe (his true path to salvation is to include himself in a ready-made nuclear family), a wonderful experience that wants you to everything from tears to joy. But in the end, the only persistent feeling is that of deja vu, that we’ve been here too many times, and it would not be nice if we could rather go somewhere else