This review contains spoilers.
If you know anything about Michael Cera, you’d approach “Sacramento” with the same expectation that I did: This is going to be incredibly awkward in the best way. The movie follows up on this promise with the unremarkable but charming premise of a strained friendship tested by the ups and downs of a road trip. When Rickey, played by director Michael Angarano, asks his childhood friend Glenn (Cera) to join him on a trip down to Sacramento to scatter his late father’s ashes, Glenn begrudgingly agrees to help. However, while Rickey’s father has actually passed, he doesn’t need to scatter any ashes.
If there is one thing “Sacramento” does well, it’s wrapping the audience into the discomfort of each character and relationship. Cera’s typical skittish energy, crucial to the aesthetics of “Juno” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” demonstrates a maturity that aligns with his age and his character’s age. Now playing a husband to Rosie (Kristen Stewart) who is preparing for a baby, Cera’s nerves don’t evoke the social awkwardness of teen relationships but the sincere, all-encompassing anxieties of impending fatherhood. His hesitance bounces off of Rickey’s charisma impeccably — in a sequence with two women they meet at a bar, Rickey charms the pants off one of them while Glenn can barely carry a platonic conversation with the other.
The camera shots, though sometimes bizarrely horror movie-esque, make you feel like you’re there, sitting with the two friends while they each simultaneously try to coax an admission of struggle from the other while avoiding their own problems. It’s endlessly frustrating, but convincing. “Sacramento” also doesn’t bog the dynamic down with additional characters and complications. While there could have been a stronger emphasis on the two’s shared history, the nostalgic ability to settle into the intimacy of a friendship newly woven back together is highlighted well within stilted conversations, attempts at childlike riffing and a brief wrestling match where both of them lose.
Rickey and Glenn’s friendship also encapsulates the movie’s attempt at subverting toxic masculinity and the stigma surrounding men’s mental health. At the beginning of the movie, Glenn is significantly more stressed about the pregnancy than his wife, and she continuously encourages him to seek out help so that he stops burdening her — harsh, but completely fair. By the end, a no-longer-pregnant Rosie picks up a calmer Glenn from work, where he helps Rickey run his male support group. It’s quite an on-the-nose commentary on male mental health, but you can’t be too mad at a portrayal of men being emotionally intimate without mockery.
But “Sacramento” falls flat in a lot of other aspects. Most notably, the narrative can never quite determine its stakes. The opener is Rickey meeting a woman, Tallie, (Maya Erskine) on a hiking trail and developing a fleeting but strong romantic bond with her. She disappears until we find out that his true reason for visiting Sacramento is to return to her and the baby whose existence he had ignored. Though she hadn’t wanted or asked for his help, this reveal brings a lot of Rickey’s character into question. While his behavior when discovering that the person he had a one-night stand with has a daughter reveals a sincere respect for parenthood, we don’t spend enough time with Rickey beforehand to trust him as a father. I mean, he was at the bar picking up girls with Glenn two days ago.
Then an even more insane shift happens: Glenn tries to kidnap Rickey’s baby. See, the movie is unequivocally funny, and on its own, this scene can strike the balance of being comedic and addressing Glenn’s neurotic habits. He fears everything in Tallie’s house — exposed outlets, dirty dishes and, above all, the creaky crib — but it boils down to his own fears about failing as a dad. However, the absurdity of the moment, though performed well, just doesn’t quite land given the relative normalcy of everything leading up to it. The stakes are obviously very high for the mother, but she seems to get past this quickly and ends up with Rickey at the end. It’s just all a bit too easy.
Though “Sacramento” succeeds in the heartwarming trope of two buddies on a trip together and the uncomfortable portrayals of two drastically different types of troubled lives, it just needed to be about 20 minutes longer to develop the actual plot. It has a wonderful vibe, complete with sunny color grading and great music, but an underbaked story.
Contact Oshmi Gosh at [email protected].