Sacramento is a rare kind of low key comedy. It’s a charming film about people who aren’t inherently charming. One of them thinks he’s charming, but that’s not the same as being the type of human being one wants to be around because of how they make friends feel. Built around a complex male friendship that’s both nurturing and toxic at the same time, director, star, and co-writer Michael Angarano’s second feature effort examines failed coping mechanisms and unchecked neuroses with intimate, amusing detail and a warm heart.
Rickey (Angarano) is struggling to come to terms with the grief he feels over the death of his dad one year ago. He’s also well into his thirties and doesn’t appear to have done a lot of growing up. Rickey certainly has plenty of unsolicited advice for everyone on how they should approach their affairs, but he’s oblivious to anyone trying to do the same for him. He talks like he’s lived through a lot, but really, he’s as average as anyone. To top it all off, his beleaguered therapist has suggested that Rickey move in with a friend or close family member to help with the process of moving on.
After about a year without contact, Rickey comes back into the life of his onetime best friend Glenn (Michael Cera), a neurotic time bomb with a mine field of a brain. Glenn is trying and failing mightily to keep cool while perpetually worrying and stressing out over the arrival of his first child. Glenn’s loving, but concerned wife (Kristen Stewart) wishes her husband would chill out for a bit, and thinks that spending time with Rickey might help. But Glenn doesn’t want to spend any time with Rickey, who he sees as a compulsive liar who can’t take responsibility for his actions. After showing up at Glenn’s house unannounced in the old beater convertible he owned as a teenager, what was supposed to be a normal hangout and catch up turns into an impromptu six hour, 340 mile road trip north from Los Angeles to Sacramento. At first, Glenn is furious, but Rickey says whatever he can to make sure his friend doesn’t abandon him. Rickey repeatedly lies to Glenn about reasons for taking a trip to a city neither of them have actually visited before, always hiding his true motivation.
Angarano and co-writer Chris Smith have built Sacramento out of a classic odd couple conceit; two people who refuse to talk about the things that bother them, thusly sabotaging any chance they have a genuine happiness. Rickey bluffs and charms his way around life’s roadblocks and emotional lows, dodging responsibilities and traumas with a smile and an anecdote. Glenn seethes with anxiety driven rage that bottles up under pressure until a volcanic explosion happens every now and again. Neither is living a healthy life, nor do they want to make it seem like they don’t have their shit together. But while Rickey remains a stunted adolescent who thinks they have a mind of a psychiatrist, Glenn has run from his younger, more carefree self at full force because he’s deathly afraid of failure and mistakes, something compounded by now having to care for a small human.
Angarano makes it easy to see why Glenn and Rickey have such a love/hate relationship, and why their issues complement each other perfectly. They each have something to teach their friend, but neither knows what it will take to get through to them. Sacramento puts these characters on a collision course not only with each other, but with impending mental breakdowns that will help them move on from their troubles. The script creates organic scenarios based around the tall tales Rickey loves to spin and Glenn’s unconvincing insistence that he’s doing just fine, and while the comedy contained within Sacramento isn’t always of the gut busting variety, Angarano’s film is consistently observant, witty, and humane enough to make viewers smile through the most awkward of scenarios.
It’s hard to talk about Sacramento’s most dramatic points, however, as the most cathartic stuff Angarano comes up with is built around the big reveal of Rickey’s true reason for wanting to take and then perpetually extend the road trip. Suffice to say, it all works rather well, providing Angarano and Cera plenty to work with. Angarano nicely plays Rickey as a ball of misplaced energy and racing thoughts that’s trying a bit too desperately to be loved and accepted. Cera does some of his best comedic and dramatic work yet as Rickey’s frighteningly wound up counterpart; a man who shuts down so completely that he works himself up into a shit-fit before dropping into a thousand yard stare full of fear and regret. Maya Erskine (Angarano’s off screen partner) has a wonderful role as one of Rickey’s former loves, and Stewart deftly deadpan’s her way through her performance as a woman who’s not-so-secretly thrilled to get her husband out of the house for a bit. There’s also a nice performance given by former wrestler AJ Mendez as a professional fighter that Rickey gets sweet on, and a character that will help guide this manchild ever so slightly onto the right track.
There’s nothing all that flashy about Sacramento, and there doesn’t need to be an abundance of style for it to work. Angarano creates a pleasingly straightforward story about complicated people who try strenuously to avoid complications. It’s meant to make the viewer emotionally connect to people they either recognize in their own lives or possibly even get a better understanding of themselves. It’s situational and character driven, but never to the degree of a sitcom or cliched road trip comedy. It’s the kind of freewheeling, but focused indie film that doesn’t get made much nowadays. There’s something nostalgic about Sacramento, but not in a negative way. In fact, Sacramento is the kind of movie that uses the double edged sword of nostalgia as a rather cutting way of getting its points across.
Sacramento opens in select Canadian cities – including at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto – on Friday, April 11, 2025.
