Palmer

You’ve got to give credit to Justin Timberlake for taking a role that has him upstaged time and again by a 7-year-old boy with giant glasses and a barrette in his hair. Timberlake is the title character in the Apple TV+ movie Palmer, which takes the “gruff loner stuck with a small child” genre to new places.

The actual place is a small town north of Lake Pontchartrain in southern Louisiana, but the thematic place is the fate of a gender-nonconforming child in red-state America (and most of blue- and purple-state America, come to think of it). Little Sam, a spiritual sibling of Olive from Little Miss Sunshine, has a drug-addicted mom who lives in a trailer adjacent to Palmer’s grandmother’s house. Whenever mom disappears for a night or for many weeks, grandma Vivian (June Squibb) takes him in. When Eddie Palmer finishes a 12-year prison sentence, he winds up back at Vivian’s house, where Sam quickly starts affectionately calling him “Palmer,” like everyone else in town.

It’s not hard to see where this is going, and indeed much of Palmer is predictable — but mostly in that smile-of-familiarity way, rather than the tired-cliché way. Sam, who loves playing tea party, bathing with dolls, and watching a TV show about frilly fairies, gets bullied. Palmer meets Maggie (Alisha Wainwright), the sweet and supportive art teacher at Sam’s school. Palmer learns that his pre-prison buddies are jerks. Child Protective Services makes bad decisions.

It’s a kind of gender-fluid Movie of the Week, but it moves along at a good clip, it’s smartly structured, it’s long on laughs, and director Fisher Stevens (yes, the goofy-looking actor) doesn’t sentimentalize the material. The screenplay, by first-timer Cheryl Guerriero, is lean, often clever, and blessedly free of speechifying.

Mostly, though, it’s just a joy to watch 7-year-old Ryder Allen, as Sam, play off of Timberlake for laughs and tugs of the heartstrings. The boy is the finest cock-eyed optimist of the playground since Olive, and reason enough to seek out access to Apple TV+. Timberlake, in contrast, stays low-key, the straight man in every sense, and keeps Palmer sympathetic even when he’s doing stupid shit, like having a one-night stand with Shelly (Juno Temple), Sam’s mom.

Shelly is among the film’s weak spots, being something of a convenience, her actions driven largely by the need to hit certain plot points. And Maggie, like many prospective girlfriends in working-class romances, seems a bit too good to be true, despite Wainwright’s valiant efforts to keep her grounded. But Squibb is the perfect poor, church-going grandma, and viewers will forgive the movie’s several shortcuts for the joy of watching things come out more or less the way you want them to.

Grade: B. Rated R. Available to stream via Apple TV+.

(Photo: Apple TV+)