SACRAMENTO - Mark Reviews Movies

Sacramento, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 10, 2025

So much has changed for longtime friends Glenn (Michael Cera) and Rickey (Michael Angarano) since they met as children. They are both in their older 30s now, have seen other friendships come and fall by the wayside, and now are so different from each other that it's surprising they were ever friends in the first place.

Maybe that was the appeal growing up and through part of adulthood, but at this point, the relationship has worn down Glenn to the point that he wants to cut Rickey out of his life. Rickey clearly doesn't want that to happen.

Sacramento, co-written and directed by Angarano, takes this tricky dynamic and this difficult relationship down an unfortunately familiar path, mainly by transforming it into a sort of road-trip story. That's an easy way to bring forth some conflict, as the impromptu trip goes from a local lunch outing in Los Angeles to more than a day in a car and in various spots throughout the eponymous city, and gags. When the focus is on those things, though, it's tougher for that kind of story to break through its formula and get at the heart at what's really going on with its characters.

That's especially true in the case of these two, who may seem quite different on the surface in terms of personality but share one trait very much in common. Neither Glenn nor Rickey is open about how he feels, why he's feeling it, and asking for the help and support he obviously needs. Here's a story, in other words, that very well might come to a quick end if either man could say what's on his mind, because Rickey might realize he's crossing some boundaries or Glenn might finally have a good reason to tell his old friend that he's finished with him.

Since we know that, there's plenty of tension in this study of a friendship that might have reached its natural end. Even so, one can't help but wonder what might have happened if Angarano and Chris Smith's screenplay allowed these characters to be honest with themselves and each other instead of dancing around the things that really matter to them.

This is mainly to say that the movie is slightly insightful about its characters, is funny in coming up with various obstacles or acts of sabotage to keep this get-together going, and does eventually allow them to show each other—because talking really doesn't seem to be an option at this point in time—what's really bothering them at the moment. It's an amusing little lark of a character-based comedy, but there's so much more going on beneath the surface that those characters always feel as if they deserve to do and say more than the movie allows them.

The most important and worrying thing for Glenn at the moment, for example, is that his wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart) is pregnant and about to give birth to the couple's first child. He's a nervous wreck about it, as becomes painfully clear when Glenn discovers a squeak in the forthcoming baby's crib and starts testing its stability until he actually breaks the thing. Rosie is infinitely patient with her anxiety-ridden husband, but when Rickey shows up (hiding in a tree to try to scare Glenn), it seems like a relief when her husband's old pal decides to take him away for several hours.

Meanwhile, Rickey mainly seems to just want to hang out with Glenn, who has been avoiding his calls for some time. The guy seems pretty lonely, still hanging out the convalescence facility where his late father lived, although a prologue shows him in the midst of a sweet romance with Tallie (Maya Erskine), after the two meet by chance while on separate camping trips. How that introduction figures into the story is played as a bit of a surprise, and once it's revealed, that piece of information only makes us wonder even more about how this story might have played with that detail out in the open.

Instead, Rickey suggests a random trip to Sacramento after his lunch with Glenn, and sarcastically, Glenn agrees, thinking it's a joke. When Glenn ultimately calls what he thinks is his friend's bluff, Rickey says the trip is actually to spread his late father's remains, and Glenn can't refuse that request—even though it isn't true.

It's frustrating to have to talk around a lot of what is happening with Rickey and will eventually happen between these characters, simply because the structure of the narrative is so evasive and the characters are so closed-off from each other. That the latter shared characteristic is so patently obvious does mean there is something to seeing this relationship at play, particularly because Cera and Angarano, who are very good in these roles, have a rapport that's somehow simultaneously relaxed and barbed. These characters know too much, perhaps, about each other for that not to be the case.

It's easy to like Sacramento to some extent, simply because the leads communicate each character's foibles and play off each other so well. Their dynamic is entertaining in the way of comedically mismatched pairings, but when the third act lays everything and the full extent of each man's worries bare, it's proof that there is a deeper, richer story to be told about these guys and their complicated bond.

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