‘Palmer’ Review: Justin Timberlake Plays Foster Father to a Gender-Nonconforming Kid
Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn “Palmer,” Justin Timberlake taps into his roots, headlining the inverse of last year’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” in which a Southern boy who went off to Yale looked back on his origins to explain the red-state attitudes that look so alien to conservatives. Here, Timberlake delivers a beer-chugging, pickup-driving, fight-picking portrait of what he might have become had he not left Tennessee at 12 to appear on “The All-New Mickey Mouse Club.” Not him, per se, but picture a talent who never got the chance to broaden his horizons.