‘Sacramento’ Review: Just Weird Enough to Satisfy

Sacramento
Writer: Michael Angarano, Christopher Nicholas Smith
Director: Michael Angarano
Cast: Michael Angarano, Michael Cera, Kristen Stewart, Maya Erskine

I have often beaten the critical drum that there's nothing wrong with a formulaic story so long as it's told well and its heart is in the right place, but I'm not sure that's entirely true. Or at least that's not the whole truth. 

Yes, the right cast and crew can go a long way to making a formula-driven film work wonders, as anyone who's seen their fair share of heist pictures or slasher movies can tell you. But in those cases, what often matters most is the quirky spirit attached to that formula. You need, at the very least, a sense that even if they're not bringing something all that different to the structure, the filmmakers at least believe that they can do something new with it. Sacramento takes pleasure in that kind of belief, that earnest effort to find something singular amid a story we've seen before, and it's just good enough to make you believe it too. 

The latest in a long line of films about two young men confronting the anxieties of responsibility through different lenses, Sacramento picks up just as father-to-be Glenn (Michael Cera) realizes his old friend Rickey (Michael Angarano, who also directs and co-writes) is back in Los Angeles. Rickey's had a hard go of things recently and, after a stint in psychiatric care, is basically looking for a foothold back into society. Meanwhile Glenn, prone to panic attacks and wracked with anxiety over impending fatherhood, is hesitant to let his impulsive old friend back into his life. Convinced that he needs to get out of the house and live a little before the baby arrives, Glenn's wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart) talks him into taking a road trip with Rickey from L.A. to Sacramento, where Rickey claims he needs to find closure by scattering his recently departed father's ashes. Along the way, the pair reconnect, confront their various fears and hopes, and, of course, get into some trouble.

As with other recent films like A Real Pain, this is a story that starts with two guys seemingly at odds when it comes to the structures (or lack thereof) in their various lives and then reveals that, shocker, they're not so different. Rickey, for all his recklessness and seeming lack of focus, is surprisingly motivated and clearheaded on the other side of his grief and mental health struggles. Compare that to Glenn, whose role as caretaker to his wife and expectant father to his child is masking tremendous, often crippling insecurity and fear. You can see these two arcs crisscrossing from a mile away, spot the emotional beats soaring toward you big as boulders. 

But what makes Sacramento work — and to be clear, it mostly works, but it doesn't totally work — isn't a reliance on the expected conventions of its chosen dramedy narrative. Those conventions are there, sure, but Angarano's script, co-written with Chris Smith, is much more interested in unpacking the true messiness at the heart of these two guys. Rickey's true dilemmas don't really come to light until an old flame named Tallie (Maya Erskine) starts to creep back into his life, while Glenn is seemingly falling apart from the moment we meet him.

There's no one moment of great catharsis, no build to a satisfying emotional payoff. It's all an emotional payoff, all a rollercoaster of indecision and existential terror and the strange bonds that form when two people are just allowed to be hot messes together. Like Superbad before it, to name another Michael Cera joint, the nominal quest of the narrative really only exists to bring out this messiness, and that allows Sacramento to, for better and for worse, get weird with it.

And it's that weirdness that forms the true soul and quirky singularity of the film. Angarano, in just his second feature out as a director, is wise enough and comedically-minded enough to let his co-stars really explore the psychological eccentricities of their characters, whether it's Cera's near-constant state of panic (something he's been honing since the Arrested Development days), Erskine's playful exhaustion, or Stewart's knowing winks at the audience as a woman who knows very well that she's married a man who can be A Lot. Angarano himself, clearly tuned in to the spirit of the words he wrote, also gets in on the fun, playing Rickey as a guy who's equal parts wisdom and absolute foolishness, sophomoric in the purest sense of the word.

Taken together, these performances, and Angarano's directorial patience with letting his cast unravel these things in their own way, create a radiating sense of gentleness in the film, even at its wildest (and it does get rather wild in the third act). It's a film that lets the quirks show through, and while they don't always elevate the formulas of the script, most of the time the film is so compassionate, so kind with its characters and scenarios that you can't help but be warmed by it. It's a movie that thrives on the little things, and when you're playing in a world this focused on character and the individual needs of each human mind and heart, that's always a winning formula.