Photo by Sacramento Review: Michael Cera Freaks Out About Having a Baby with Kristen Stewart in Michael Angarano’s Slight but Satisfying Road Comedy
As someone who’s old enough to have seen the likes of ‘Superbad’ and ‘Youth in Revolt’ when they first opened in theaters, it’s hard not to feel a little unstuck in time as I watch millennial teen icon Michael Cera make the gradual transition towards dad roles. I was completely unfazed by the fact that he became a father in real life, but there’s something kind of fourth-dimensional about watching an actor grow up on screen while their most famous characters stay the same age forever.
Michael Cera in Sacramento
But some things never change, and coming of age in tandem with an actor like Cera reminds you of that too. Yes, ‘Superbad’ is a high school movie about a pair of besties who can’t bear the thought of being apart, while Michael Angarano’s sweetly amusing ‘Sacramento’ is a road movie about a pair of estranged old pals whose reunion is entirely fueled by adult neuroses, but the truth is these movies have more in common than the 17-year gap between them might suggest.
 A road trip to Sacramento
Take it from a film critic: Even gawky beta nerds get smothered by their own internalized masculinity.
If Cera has been reckoning with that reality on screen since he was a kid, the character he plays in ‘Sacramento’ doesn’t come to it until he’s about to have a kid of his own. Maybe that’s because Glenn didn’t learn to say ‘I love you’ to his best friend before they went to different colleges. Or maybe he did, only to grow up, get married, and gradually forget how self-revealing it can be to let yourself be vulnerable with other men who might understand what you’re going through.
 The anxiety of fatherhood
This might sound like the kind of part that Cera could play in his sleep, but it’s also the kind of part that he can only play so well because he’s had so much practice; as Glenn spirals out over the course of the movie, you can almost feel Cera trying to rebel against his screen persona and keep an even keel as he’s sucked into the whirlpool of his character’s anxiety.
Rickey (Angarano) is coming at a similar problem from the opposite direction. An extroverted slacker who loves talking other people through their problems (especially when it helps him to avoid confronting his own), Rickey has kept his eternal adolescence in check by shirking adult responsibilities altogether.
 Rickey, the eternal slacker
When the story picks up a year later, Rickey spends most of his time in a Los Angeles psychiatric facility; his father’s recent death probably has something to do with that, but it’s also a perfect hiding place for someone who’s never wanted to live in the real world.
 Rickey’s hiding place
Is loyalty to an old friend and/or anxiety about having a kid reason enough to spend a day or two away from a wife who could go into labor at any minute? Probably not, but Glenn’s willingness to indulge in a boys’ trip — and Rosie’s willingness to let him — is the only pill that’s hard to swallow in Angarano and Chris Smith’s lightweight script, which deftly threads the needle between a hangout vibe and more high-key antics as it makes its way north.
 A boys’ trip to Sacramento
The dynamic between the characters is oppressively obvious at first, as both of them do what they can to keep the other at a distance (Rickey opts for little white lies while Glenn keeps his mouth shut), but the entire movie and everyone in it eases into more affecting territory as the boys come to the mutual realization that they’re each in crisis.
 A crisis of masculinity
By the time Rickey furtively stuffs an empty can of tennis balls full of dirt so that he can ‘dump his father’s ashes,’ the strained comic vibe of the first 20 minutes has given way to a less forced — and often very funny — series of clever sight gags and acute seriocomic gestures, some of which are even allowed to explode into genuine setpieces (I was especially fond of the psychedelic wrestling match soundtracked to a Bill Callahan song).
 A psychedelic wrestling match
In fact, ‘Sacramento’ gets better at such a steady rate that it feels as if Angarano is easing into his confidence in real time. Over the course of a second feature that’s only a hair less modest than his micro-budget debut (2017’s ‘Avenues’), the ‘Sky High’ star graduates from overeager dilettante to unusually shrewd comic director, and the final act of the movie — which kicks off with a major pivot that I wouldn’t dare to reveal here, even though it deepens the story in every conceivable way — creates a sustained atmosphere of exasperated anarchy that allows Rickey and Glenn to braid together even as one of them completely unravels.
 Exasperated anarchy
Both of these boys need to man up in order to be ready for the next stage of their lives (which isn’t coming soon so much as it’s already here), but neither of them can do it without a little help from their friends.
 Manning up
Running eighty-something minutes with credits, ‘Sacramento’ never aspires to be much more than an incisively rendered sketch, but its casual nature and outward lack of ambition belie how well it manages to convey the terror that change brings into our lives, the mania of trying to deny it, and the relief that comes from recognizing that someone else in your world is changing with you.
 The terror of change
Grade: B
