Apple TV+ review: 'Palmer' starring Justin Timberlake is an effective Southern drama

Jump to First Reply
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2021
Singer Justin Timberlake returns to the movies on Apple TV+ in the engaging "Palmer," a Louisiana-set drama about an ex-con who becomes an unlikely father figure.

Justin Timberlake and Ryder Allen in
Justin Timberlake and Ryder Allen in "Palmer," premiering globally January 29, 2021 on Apple TV+.


Justin Timberlake has come to Apple TV+ with his first starring movie role in years in Palmer, a slow-moving but nevertheless effective drama that debuts on Apple TV+ January 29. It's not exactly a glamorous role for Timberlake, who doesn't get to sing or dance, but he ably carries the drama.

It's not a glamorous role, and is straight acting instead of also singing and dancing. But he handles the drama ably, and it's a welcome return to the screen.

For a period between 2007 and 2013, Timberlake put his music career on hold in order to appear in a succession of movies, while also regularly hosting Saturday Night Live. Timberlake then returned to music and hadn't done much acting in the years since, with the exception of voice performances in the Trolls movies.

Coming home

Justin Timberlake and Ryder Allen in
Justin Timberlake and Ryder Allen in "Palmer," premiering globally January 29, 2021 on Apple TV+.


Palmer was written by Cheryl Guerriero, in a script that was named a few years ago to the prestigious Black List. It's directed by actor Fisher Stevens.

In it, Timberlake plays the titular Eddie Palmer, a former high school football star who returns to his Louisiana hometown after a long stint in prison. Living with his grandmother (veteran character actress June Squibb), Palmer reconnects his old friends and has an early one-night stand with Shelly (Juno Temple, who is also in the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso).

After a sex scene in a trailer that's surprisingly naked and graphic by Apple standards, Shelly disappears, leaving her young, gender-non-conforming son, Sam (Ryder Allen) in Palmer's care.

Father and son

Justin Timberlake and Ryder Allen in
Justin Timberlake and Ryder Allen in "Palmer," premiering globally January 29, 2021 on Apple TV+.


While the film feels perhaps 20 minutes longer than it need be, and moves very slowly, it is a compelling character study. Palmer at its heart, is the story of a man trying to overcome the violence of the past, and emerging as an unlikely father figure for a kid who's bound to have a tough go of it in a small Southern town.

Timberlake performs well in a role for which he's not exactly the most natural choice, and his romance with a teacher (Alisha Wainwright) is undeniably sweet. The real standout in the film, though, is Ryder Allen as the young Sam, who shines in a heartbreaking role.

The film keeps the exact nature of Palmer's crime a bit vague until about halfway through, and it has some worthwhile points to make about just how difficult things are for recently released ex-cons. Another film, 2018's Blindspotting, handled this same thing a bit better, even making the crime reveal the best and most memorable part of the movie.

A better elegy

Justin Timberlake, Ryder Allen and June Squibb in
Justin Timberlake, Ryder Allen and June Squibb in "Palmer," premiering globally January 29, 2021 on Apple TV+.


While some of the characters are a bit one-dimensional -- especially Dean Winters as Shelly's one-note violent redneck boyfriend -- Palmer is both a better film, and a much more respectful portrayal of small-town American life than Netflix's recent drama Hillbilly Elegy.

As for its position in the culture wars, Palmer is a film that's respectful of churchgoing and Southern culture, although it also has considerable sympathy for the recently incarcerated, and for the plight of a bullied, gender-nonconforming child.

It's not getting the awards push that Cherry, the Tom Holland drama coming to Apple TV+ in March, has received this year. But Palmer is a successful effort, and a welcome return of Justin Timberlake, movie star.
narwhal

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    davgregdavgreg Posts: 1,053member
    Justin Timberlake is a southern boy- Tennessee. The Memphis metro area to be a little more precise. So he has a pretty good grip on southern culture.

    I live in the Memphis metro and remember seeing him out and about years ago- Memphis tends to be one of those places where being famous and still being able to get out and about is not unheard of.  Considering about half of the people in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have a work or life connection to the city, the locals tend to be a little more chilled out when someone famous pops up.

    I remember seeing him and Brittney Spears years ago literally hanging out in a record store just having a good time and people were cool enough to not bother them. By all accounts he is a pretty nice guy.
    n2itivguynarwhal
     0Likes 0Dislikes 2Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 12
    Singer Justin Timberlake returns to the movies on Apple TV+ in the engaging "Palmer," a Louisiana-set drama about an ex-con who becomes an unlikely father figure.

    While some of the characters are a bit one-dimensional -- especially Dean Winters as Shelly's one-note violent redneck boyfriend -- Palmer is both a better film, and a much more respectful portrayal of small-town American life than Netflix's recent drama Hillbilly Elegy.

    As for its position in the culture wars, Palmer is a film that's respectful of churchgoing and Southern culture, although it also has considerable sympathy for the recently incarcerated, and for the plight of a bullied, gender-nonconforming child.
    Yeah ... no. I have stated several times in the past that Apple TV+ programming is going to struggle to find an audience because - unlike Netflix which is legitimately broad based - Apple TV+ programming is aimed at a coastal, progressive feminist audience. There is virtually no programming aimed at different audiences or truly challenges its target audience. So yes, they have a film set in the south. Big deal. It still solely depicts:

    1. rural areas despite Texas and Florida being #2 in population (to California which really should be 3 different states) which Georgia and North Carolina also being in the top 10. Add Virginia and Tennessee and 6 of the top 15 states in population are in the south.
    2. poverty ... despite Texas, Florida, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina undergoing economic booms for the last 30 years, generally outstripping the economic growth of much of the west coast and northeast. South Carolina and Tennessee have transforming economies due to automobile - and in the case of SC, Boeing - manufacturing plants also.
    3. crime and football. Any movie about southern whites - do movies about southern blacks, Hispanics or Asians exist at all? - is going to have an ex-football player (hello, people play basketball, golf, tennis and even soccer in the south) and this movie simply goes with an ex-football ex-con as the same character
    4. severe family dysfunction (movies set in other regions generally more positively depict family relations, even blended family/divorce situations)
    5. rednecks and other violent/bigoted people

    This isn't "a movie about the south" but rather a movie that only depicts the south in a way that western and northeastern progressives insist on seeing it. What you will never see depicted in a movie set in the south:

    A. research universities
    B. urban life
    C. educated, highly paid professionals especially in the tech sector
    D. cosmopolitan, urbane people who attend symphonies, ballets, opera, museums and regularly travel etc.
    E. interest in sports and other activities other than football and NASCAR (Atlanta alone is the #3 market for the NBA, regularly hosts NCAA Final Fours and has MLB and pro soccer teams as well as hosting significant ATP, WTA, PGA and LPGA events)

    Meaning movies set in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa etc. (though Miami is fine because it isn't really considered southern) aren't going to happen. This is despite so many movies actually being filmed there because of lower shooting costs an increasing number of movies are shot there! That is the really frustrating part. These directors, producers, actors, writers etc. now regularly go to Georgia, North Carolina and Florida to shoot movies. Several state of the art studio facilities are there now, as well as cutting edge animation and VFX startups. Lots of talent has actually moved there full time. Yet we still get the south depicted the same way by Hollywood. 

    Wake me when we get a legal thriller set in Austin/Atlanta/Charlotte where Luke Wilson is a law professor at Texas-Austin/Emory/Duke and Constance Wu is his cybersecurity researcher wife at Texas-Austin/Georgia Tech/Duke and they track down extremists who operate on the dark web or expose some bitcoin scam or something. Or maybe starring John David Washington and Awkwafina as medical school students - there are multiple such schools in the metro areas of all 3 southern cities - who uncover collusion between big pharma and big insurance.

    But that would never happen because it would actually challenge the stereotypes that folks on the west coast and northeast insist on having about the south even as major employers - including again the film and TV industry - has spent the last 30 years relocating there. End result: movies like this only inflame the culture wars. And I am not an innovator here. Instead USA Today had an oped about how Monster's Ball and other Hollywood movies and TV shows depicted a one note version of the south meant to cater to coastal progressives and that was 20 years ago. Another thing: since Halle Berry in Monster's Ball no other black actress has won a major Academy Award (best Actress, best director, best film which goes to the producer, best original screenplay or best adapted screenplay) since which shows that despite their progressive pretensions, Hollywood isn't nearly as different from the southerners that they scapegoat as they think.

    Sorry, but this is yet another example of why most viewers are going to pass up Apple TV+ in favor of content on Netflix, Disney Plus etc. that doesn't insult them.
    edited January 2021
    razorpitJaphey
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 12
    Another thing: 

    Tim Cook. From Mobile, Alabama. B.S. in industrial engineering from Auburn University in 1982. MBA from Duke University in 1988. 
    You know something? The southeast played a huge role in the development of Internet and web 1.0 and was the single most important region for it - companies like Hayes Microcomputer, U.S. Robotics, Scientific Atlanta and Mindspring - until the dot.com crash and the web 2.0 relocating to Silicon Valley. Not only does Tim Cook know this but he almost certainly went to school with some of the people who made it happen as well as worked with some of them during his time at IBM! Yet he allows his company to traffic in these same stereotypes that he personally knows are not true.


    razorpitJaphey
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 4 of 12
    cloudguy said:
    Singer Justin Timberlake returns to the movies on Apple TV+ in the engaging "Palmer," a Louisiana-set drama about an ex-con who becomes an unlikely father figure.

    While some of the characters are a bit one-dimensional -- especially Dean Winters as Shelly's one-note violent redneck boyfriend -- Palmer is both a better film, and a much more respectful portrayal of small-town American life than Netflix's recent drama Hillbilly Elegy.

    As for its position in the culture wars, Palmer is a film that's respectful of churchgoing and Southern culture, although it also has considerable sympathy for the recently incarcerated, and for the plight of a bullied, gender-nonconforming child.
    Yeah ... no. I have stated several times in the past that Apple TV+ programming is going to struggle to find an audience because - unlike Netflix which is legitimately broad based - Apple TV+ programming is aimed at a coastal, progressive feminist audience. There is virtually no programming aimed at different audiences or truly challenges its target audience. So yes, they have a film set in the south. Big deal. It still solely depicts:

    1. rural areas despite Texas and Florida being #2 in population (to California which really should be 3 different states) which Georgia and North Carolina also being in the top 10. Add Virginia and Tennessee and 6 of the top 15 states in population are in the south.
    2. poverty ... despite Texas, Florida, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina undergoing economic booms for the last 30 years, generally outstripping the economic growth of much of the west coast and northeast. South Carolina and Tennessee have transforming economies due to automobile - and in the case of SC, Boeing - manufacturing plants also.
    3. crime and football. Any movie about southern whites - do movies about southern blacks, Hispanics or Asians exist at all? - is going to have an ex-football player (hello, people play basketball, golf, tennis and even soccer in the south) and this movie simply goes with an ex-football ex-con as the same character
    4. severe family dysfunction (movies set in other regions generally more positively depict family relations, even blended family/divorce situations)
    5. rednecks and other violent/bigoted people

    This isn't "a movie about the south" but rather a movie that only depicts the south in a way that western and northeastern progressives insist on seeing it. What you will never see depicted in a movie set in the south:

    A. research universities
    B. urban life
    C. educated, highly paid professionals especially in the tech sector
    D. cosmopolitan, urbane people who attend symphonies, ballets, opera, museums and regularly travel etc.
    E. interest in sports and other activities other than football and NASCAR (Atlanta alone is the #3 market for the NBA, regularly hosts NCAA Final Fours and has MLB and pro soccer teams as well as hosting significant ATP, WTA, PGA and LPGA events)

    Meaning movies set in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa etc. (though Miami is fine because it isn't really considered southern) aren't going to happen. This is despite so many movies actually being filmed there because of lower shooting costs an increasing number of movies are shot there! That is the really frustrating part. These directors, producers, actors, writers etc. now regularly go to Georgia, North Carolina and Florida to shoot movies. Several state of the art studio facilities are there now, as well as cutting edge animation and VFX startups. Lots of talent has actually moved there full time. Yet we still get the south depicted the same way by Hollywood. 

    Wake me when we get a legal thriller set in Austin/Atlanta/Charlotte where Luke Wilson is a law professor at Texas-Austin/Emory/Duke and Constance Wu is his cybersecurity researcher wife at Texas-Austin/Georgia Tech/Duke and they track down extremists who operate on the dark web or expose some bitcoin scam or something. Or maybe starring John David Washington and Awkwafina as medical school students - there are multiple such schools in the metro areas of all 3 southern cities - who uncover collusion between big pharma and big insurance.

    But that would never happen because it would actually challenge the stereotypes that folks on the west coast and northeast insist on having about the south even as major employers - including again the film and TV industry - has spent the last 30 years relocating there. End result: movies like this only inflame the culture wars. And I am not an innovator here. Instead USA Today had an oped about how Monster's Ball and other Hollywood movies and TV shows depicted a one note version of the south meant to cater to coastal progressives and that was 20 years ago. Another thing: since Halle Berry in Monster's Ball no other black actress has won a major Academy Award (best Actress, best director, best film which goes to the producer, best original screenplay or best adapted screenplay) since which shows that despite their progressive pretensions, Hollywood isn't nearly as different from the southerners that they scapegoat as they think.

    Sorry, but this is yet another example of why most viewers are going to pass up Apple TV+ in favor of content on Netflix, Disney Plus etc. that doesn't insult them.
    The most absurd rambling I’ve seen lately. Snoopy is Midwest, Ghost Writer is east urban, SEE is another land/world, of course there’re movies of blacks in the south, like The Color Purple, and on and on. Not even going to bother with replying to the rest of this nonsensical and uninformed drivel. 😒
    williamlondonmacguiGeorgeBMacnarwhalwinstoner71
     5Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 12
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member
    cloudguy said:
    Another thing: 

    Tim Cook. From Mobile, Alabama. B.S. in industrial engineering from Auburn University in 1982. MBA from Duke University in 1988. 
    You know something? The southeast played a huge role in the development of Internet and web 1.0 and was the single most important region for it - companies like Hayes Microcomputer, U.S. Robotics, Scientific Atlanta and Mindspring - until the dot.com crash and the web 2.0 relocating to Silicon Valley. Not only does Tim Cook know this but he almost certainly went to school with some of the people who made it happen as well as worked with some of them during his time at IBM! Yet he allows his company to traffic in these same stereotypes that he personally knows are not true.


    Mindspring, now there’s a name I haven’t heard of in a long time. Somewhere I have a brand new, unwrapped Visor in a box. They were the bomb at one time.

    You nailed the “coastal, progressive feminist audience.” The only program I can get in to on AppleTV+ is Ted Lasso which somehow managed to slip by the required stereotypes. Even Amazing Stories had to have progressive storylines artificially injected in to it. Our family went and watched the original series in anticipation of the new one and it went from a great family experience, to something radically different.

    Until this mindset changes the service will continue to flounder. There are a lot of normal people that live between the two progressive coastlines that aren’t interested in what Apple has to offer.
    williamlondon
     0Likes 0Dislikes 1Informative
  • Reply 6 of 12
    cloudguy said:
    Yeah ... no. I have stated several times in the past that Apple TV+ programming is going to struggle to find an audience because - unlike Netflix which is legitimately broad based - Apple TV+ programming is aimed at a coastal, progressive feminist audience. There is virtually no programming aimed at different audiences or truly challenges its target audience. So yes, they have a film set in the south. Big deal....

    Maybe 2021 is the year that John Grisham and Nicholas Sparks finally see movies made of their books about the South. They have waited for so long for Hollywood to come calling.

    First of all, you didn’t indicate if you had seen “Palmer” but you slaughtered innumerable pixels to tell us that this wasn’t the 
    “South”, it was only Hollywood’s depiction of the South.

    As one who lives in the exurbs of Charlotte, it is true that it is a very cosmopolitan city, due to an airport which has direct flights to much of the world, and an investment in businesses which involve finance and technology.

    I can also drive 5 minutes from my home and see many homes flying the flag of the Confederacy on the flag pole at their home, including one citizen who flies the US flag *below* the Confederate flag, and *upside down*. Others proudly have the 3% flag on their front porch flag pole. Even the urban reaches of the South aren’t magically purged of the remnants of their cliché reputation just because you want it to be true.

    For what its worth, the TV series “The Unicorn” is set in Raleigh, but one look at the suburban architecture and the plant life tells you it was shot in LA. Still, this series is very successfully in its second season and nobody seems to mind that the Southerners depicted have all their own teeth. It can’t be that “Hollywood” is reluctant to show this environment, but instead it may be that there is no reason to set a show in Atlanta or Charlotte or wherever if it doesn’t somehow advance the story possibilities. Otherwise, set in in LA, or set it in NYC and shoot it in Toronto.

    williamlondon
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 7 of 12
    GeorgeBMacgeorgebmac Posts: 11,421member
    razorpit said:
    cloudguy said:
    Another thing: 

    Tim Cook. From Mobile, Alabama. B.S. in industrial engineering from Auburn University in 1982. MBA from Duke University in 1988. 
    You know something? The southeast played a huge role in the development of Internet and web 1.0 and was the single most important region for it - companies like Hayes Microcomputer, U.S. Robotics, Scientific Atlanta and Mindspring - until the dot.com crash and the web 2.0 relocating to Silicon Valley. Not only does Tim Cook know this but he almost certainly went to school with some of the people who made it happen as well as worked with some of them during his time at IBM! Yet he allows his company to traffic in these same stereotypes that he personally knows are not true.


    ...
    You nailed the “coastal, progressive feminist audience.” ...

    Only to one dimensional people who paint the world as either black or its white and want to divide the nation into (what they consider) good guys and bad guys.
    narwhal
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 8 of 12
    GeorgeBMacgeorgebmac Posts: 11,421member
    ...
    While some of the characters are a bit one-dimensional -- especially Dean Winters as Shelly's one-note violent redneck boyfriend -- Palmer is both a better film, and a much more respectful portrayal of small-town American life than Netflix's recent drama Hillbilly Elegy.

    As for its position in the culture wars, Palmer is a film that's respectful of churchgoing and Southern culture, although it also has considerable sympathy for the recently incarcerated, and for the plight of a bullied, gender-nonconforming child.

    ...
    Umm?
    I didn't realize that small town, rural America was so homogenous.

     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 9 of 12
    narwhalnarwhal Posts: 127member
    I really enjoyed the movie. In one respect it seemed a bit like a Lifetime or Hallmark movie about someone coming back from another life to their hometown and trying to fit in. But the story took place from the man’s perspective, was way more intriguing, sexy and dramatic with better acting. (I choose not to read long diatribes by folks who like to complain without first watching the movie. There’s no way they are going to like this movie because at its core it’s about kindness.)
    GeorgeBMac
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 10 of 12
    narwhalnarwhal Posts: 127member
    Okay, here’s another thing about complainers on this thread: you’re upset because the bullied kid is gender-nonconforming? It’s irrelevant to the story what the thing is they’re being bullied about. Just pretend the kid is brown and being bullied for that if it makes you feel better. Jeesh!
    GeorgeBMac
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 11 of 12
    22july201322july2013 Posts: 3,762member
    razorpit said:
    Even Amazing Stories had to have progressive storylines artificially injected in to it. 
    Until this mindset changes the service will continue to flounder. There are a lot of normal people that live between the two progressive coastlines that aren’t interested in what Apple has to offer.
    How true. I agree. It feels to me as if the plot lines are reviewed and approved by Apple's Director of Diversity before anything goes to film. When polled, Americans believe 24% of Americans are gay, yet the true number is about 4%. One of my favourite questions to ask my friends is "What percent of Americans do you think are black?" I've heard as large as 50%, with everyone else wildly overestimating. The correct value now is 13%, although it was 10% when I started asking this question decades ago. I'm not upset that Americans are ignorant of diversity issues, I'm just sad.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 12 of 12
    GeorgeBMacgeorgebmac Posts: 11,421member
    razorpit said:
    Even Amazing Stories had to have progressive storylines artificially injected in to it. 
    Until this mindset changes the service will continue to flounder. There are a lot of normal people that live between the two progressive coastlines that aren’t interested in what Apple has to offer.
    How true. I agree. It feels to me as if the plot lines are reviewed and approved by Apple's Director of Diversity before anything goes to film. When polled, Americans believe 24% of Americans are gay, yet the true number is about 4%. One of my favourite questions to ask my friends is "What percent of Americans do you think are black?" I've heard as large as 50%, with everyone else wildly overestimating. The correct value now is 13%, although it was 10% when I started asking this question decades ago. I'm not upset that Americans are ignorant of diversity issues, I'm just sad.

    Conservatives only get information that is "conservative approved".   It's why they say silly things.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.