Sacramento Review: Michael Angarano’s Amiable Road Trip Dramedy Charts a Tried-and-True Path

With a plucky, inherent likability as a performer that extends to his leisurely directorial aesthetic, Michael Angarano’s second feature Sacramento is an amiable, freewheeling road trip dramedy that rides on its central performances, courtesy of Michael Cera and the actor-writer-director as strained best friends. In exploring fatherhood, mental health, and the lies we tell ourselves (and others) to keep trucking along, Angarano and co-writer Chris Smith haven’t uncovered a wealth of revelations on tried-and-true thematic ground, yet there’s just enough smart comedic timing and dramatic perceptiveness to make this an adventure worth taking.

Experiencing more anxiety about the impending birth of his child than his wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart), Cera’s Glenn needs an excuse to unwind from the mounting mental and physical preparations. Despite Glenn being in the process of “phasing out” his untrustworthy, sporadically attentive best friend, Rickey (Angarano) shows up in his back lawn, guilt-tripping him to take a ride from Los Angeles to Sacramento in order to spread the ashes of his recently deceased father. Rickey’s sly deceitfulness around reasons for the trip becomes clearer in Glenn’s eyes, and a competing sense of moral righteousness that they can fix each other’s anxieties and problems starts creating a wedge. While Glenn may appear to have his life together, the film becomes a humorous portrait of two men coming to the realization of varying levels of crisis.

Cera, who continues his collaborations with Angarano after Mark Webber’s The End of Love and as composer of his directorial debut Avenues, is a delight as a doting, committed husband quick to confess some “morally ambiguous behavior” when he simply converses with a woman about his “closed marriage” the previous night. With bit parts compared to the male leads, Maya Erskine and Stewart’s roles skew on the thankless side, even if it is refreshing to see two female characters who have an independent handle on their lives irrespective of any involvement of significant others, absent or otherwise. As a director, Angarano shows a smart comedic rhythm throughout, from gags about realizing how far Los Angeles really is from Sacramento to an unceremonious dumping of “ashes” to the audience seeing their car getting towed as a diner meal unfolds.

It’s during Sacramento‘s final stretch that the goodwill built towards appreciably messy characters starts to unwind. In a heightened frenzy, Glenn makes an erratic decision that doesn’t line up with the character we’ve come to know, breaking the spell of the experience and stretching a certain sense of credulity. Part of the issue may simply be the charm baggage Cera brings for anyone who has grown up watching him since his Arrested Development days, but it’s an inconsistency that reflects poorly on the script. Nonetheless, it doesn’t wholly derail Sacramento, a dramedy that may feel predictable in retrospect and wraps up too patly yet exudes warm humor and affectionate feeling in the moments that count.

Sacramento opens in theaters on Friday, April 11.

The post Sacramento Review: Michael Angarano’s Amiable Road Trip Dramedy Charts a Tried-and-True Path first appeared on The Film Stage.