"Sacramento" makes a hilarious, heartfelt case for California's capital

As the song goes, “I left my heart in San Francisco.” Yet, I find there’s not much in the Golden City worth pining over that hard. The food’s good, the people are pretty nice and the hills assure everyone’s calves are shredded year-round. But in all my time spent within state lines, I remember the days in San Francisco the least. The quieter locales of California are the most notable to me. There might be a mythic air to places like San Francisco or its pretentious older sister city, Los Angeles. But in those places, it’s hard to remain grounded in the state’s soft beauty, most easily admired in its sleepiest spots like its fair capital city, Sacramento.

Sacramento is sprawling yet confined, natural yet metropolitan. If you round the corner of a busy, sun-drenched downtown street, you might suddenly discover yourself buried under the shade of trees that stretch up to the skies and merge, as if a forest appeared in the city’s center one afternoon. Drive along its residential streets, and you’ll notice that houses exist outside of time. Stately, white colonials are on one block, while modest Spanish revivals sit on the next. For all that has been said about the dreammaking happening in Los Angeles, the city itself is far less romantic. On the other hand, Sacramento is the kind of town where you leave your heart without even realizing it. 

Artists have been trying to capture Sacramento’s strange, electric majesty for years. Joan Didion’s 2003 memoir “Where I Was From” does this with a generous realism. But the city played a part throughout all of her major works, popping up in wistful anecdotes about how she learned to swim in the town’s rivers and how she both valued and contended with how her perception of the city had changed since she was a child. In 2005's “The Year of Magical Thinking,” she wrote about how memories of high school dances at Christmas comforted her during a rare but intense moment of panic following the deaths of her only daughter and husband. And then there's Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut “Lady Bird,” an all-out love letter to Sacramento that opens with a Didion quote and acknowledges just how restricting it can feel to be stuck halfway between a big city and a small town.

Now, actor, writer and director Michael Angarano tries a hand at something different in “Sacramento,” a film that, despite its title, is only partially set in California's capital. But that’s not to say that the movie is misleading, only that it’s not so much a love letter as it is a film that spends its runtime capturing the city’s unpredictable spirit as its characters journey toward their titular destination. When they arrive, “Sacramento” proves itself wry and authentic, a sweet but slight gem that properly reflects life’s ever-changing nature and how we find contentment amid that chaos.

The film opens somewhere deep in the California redwoods, where Rickey (Angarano) is startled by a shout from across the riverbank. It’s the voice of a fellow hiker, Tallie (Maya Erskine), warning him that she can see his manhood splayed out in a chair as Rickey dozes in the sun. After he calls her bluff, the two share a romantic evening that will change their lives forever. The film’s cold open meet-cute is a delightful start to “Sacramento” that keenly hooks its audience with the palpable chemistry between Angarano and Erskine, the latter of whom continues to be the shining glory of every project she’s in, which is no different here. However, when the movie flashes forward to a year after their first night together and waves goodbye to Tallie for a significant stretch of its runtime, Angarano threatens to commit the cardinal sin of wasting his most charming actor. Or, he would if Angarano himself wasn’t just as engaging.

As Rickey, a flighty self-starter who just can’t seem to get started, Angarano is wildly funny and also painfully familiar. He’s a people pleaser with attachment issues, the kind of character who is alluring enough to make those two opposite traits feel uniquely linked. At the outset of the film’s narrative, Rickey is kindly asked to leave a grief support group that he’s all but taken over after the death of his father. He’s become a little too good at making other people in the group feel like his whims are their ideas. That pattern rears its head again a short time later when Rickey meets up with his old friend Glenn (Michael Cera) and convinces him to join him on a road trip to Sacramento.

Maya Erskine, Michael Angarano, Michael Cera and Kristen Stewart in "Sacramento" (David Haskell/Vertical)The two best friends are perfectly mismatched: Rickey is a pathological liar who doesn’t realize his frustrating mendacity, while Glenn has difficulty expressing how he feels about anything, leading to fugue states of panic. Glenn is leveled out at home by his wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart), who manages to keep things running smoothly despite being in the third trimester of her first pregnancy. When Rickey shows up unexpectedly in the couple’s backyard, it’s not long before he whisks Glenn away on a trip at Rosie’s behest. She could use some time alone, and Glenn could use a forced change of scenery — even if it’s under false pretenses.

Rickey tells Glenn that he’s headed to Sacramento to honor his late father, who was born there and loved his hometown. Rickey could use emotional support when he scatters his ashes. When Glenn relents and calls the Mrs. for approval, Rickey sprints to the nearby desert and scoops up some dirt in a Wilson tennis ball canister. Neither Glenn nor the viewer knows exactly what will happen when the two get to their destination. But, then again, no one who visits Sacramento ever really realizes why they’re there until long after they cross the city limits.

When I last visited the city just over a decade ago, I was there to see a then-boyfriend and his family before we departed for our own road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway. My time in Sacramento bookended the voyage, and I got the chance to fall in love with the city in a way that I rarely do when I visit someplace for the first time. There’s something special about seeing a place like Sacramento through the eyes of somebody who grew up there. A relatively average town becomes the most breathtaking place on Earth when someone you love points out all of their favorite places, ones conjuring particular memories each time they pass. This is a much taller order in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the transient, ephemeral nature of the city makes it harder for memory to persist. “That Capital One Café used to be the YMCA where I learned to swim” just doesn’t share the same emotional resonance.

Kristen Stewart and Michael Cera in "Sacramento" (Courtesy of Vertical). A few months after that trip, we got news that my boyfriend’s father had become sick, and he passed away soon after. Almost two years later, we stopped the relationship and ended all communication. I haven’t been back to Sacramento since — only in the movies, like “Lady Bird” and 2016’s all-too-familiar “Other People,” Chris Kelly’s excellent and criminally underrated dramedy about losing a parent to cancer. With these films, I got another chance to come face to face with my memories of the city, seen through my ex's eyes. There were all those familiar landmarks and peaceful side streets tucked away in pockets of California you don’t often see on the big screen. 

Despite the capriciousness of Glenn and Rickey’s friendship as they rocket toward Sacramento, Angarano dutifully acknowledges the city’s agreeably slow pace in the film. It’s the kind of deceleration that an Angeleno like Glenn needs, and it also buys time for Rickey to figure out how to keep his lie going as long as he possibly can. But though they’re different in many respects, the two best friends can see right through each other, and there’s a clock ticking until the jig is up. Rickey isn’t there to scatter his dad’s ashes; he’s there to reconnect with Tallie, whom he bailed on after their one blissful day together. 

Glenn all but malfunctions when he discovers the real reason he’s been dragged across California and the lengths that Rickey has gone to avoid telling the truth. Angarano and his co-writer, Christopher Nicholas Smith, handle this inevitable revelation with care and humor. And though the innate chemistry between Angarano and Cera is on display for almost the entire movie, it’s never more human and believable than it is when Glenn and Rickey have to navigate the potential fallout of their friendship and own up to what they both could’ve done to avoid the mess they're in. Erskine comes back into the picture to prop up the film’s warm final act, and though she and Stewart are underutilized, the film’s dialogue is tender enough to give both women a whole lot of realism with a short amount of screen time. 

When Rickey and Glenn learn to let go of petty squabbles and stop using their physical distance as an excuse to refute their connection, “Sacramento” hits a lovely final note. They are two people who fundamentally understand one another; their differences balance each other. Rickey and Glenn are meant to be in each other’s lives — inextricably connected through time, despite whatever distance they might incur from here on out.

I felt something similar to that fated inevitability a couple of years back, running into that old boyfriend on the street one afternoon in Brooklyn. Removed from all of the quarrels of our past and further from the fresh sting of grief, we hugged and talked about how much we missed one another over the years and about all of the regrets we shared. Had we not spent that time together in his hometown — days laughing with his family in Sacramento, getting to know all of the things about the city that made it feel like home to them — I don’t know that we would’ve had a connection that kept us thinking about each other through the years. I don’t know that I would’ve cried watching or reading anything set in Sacramento. I don’t know that we would’ve become friends again, as we are now. 

“Sacramento” might not be about California’s capital per se, but it perfectly reflects the latent magic so many people have experienced in the city it’s named for, and the bonds people forge there. It’s unassuming but unforgettable, a place that teaches you about yourself, even if you might not understand how until years later, when all of the things you felt during your time there come bubbling back up to the surface. 

We could stand to surrender ourselves to life’s unpredictability a little more often, as Glenn, Rickey and now I have learned to do. Trying to control everything only spoils the surprise.