Sunday morning in Sacramento, an eclectic crowd chills at Forgotten Bakery while Levitation Room vibes on the speakers. Locals sit with their dogs, eat empanadas, and sip iced coffee. The atmosphere is hip, relaxed, and far from the Sacramento portrayed in Michael Angarano’s film, Sacramento, which debuted this April at our beautiful Tower Theater.
In Angarano’s eyes, Sacramento is stuck in the Reagan era. Its wood-paneled bars and John Wain decor reinstate dated masculine expectations. Sacramento is Dad-country: a broken past and a possible future of ruin.
Sacramento is about anxious Los Angeles men leaving everything they know in exchange for impending fatherhood. It isn’t a typical buddy road trip promising adventure and comical mishap. It’s a disaster story. Childhood friends who met in swim class, Rickey (played by Angarano), panicked and almost drowned Glenn (Michael Cera), an event that forever defined their relationship.
“Please do not do coke in the bathroom”, reads a prop sign as Glenn desperately calls estranged friends who have abandoned him in his mental decline. Through voicemail, Glenn announces that he and his wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart) are expecting a baby. It’s great! He lost his job. Not great. Cramped in the small bathroom, Glenn presses close to the mirror, reassuring absentee friends and his reflection that being an at-home dad is a good thing. Denial is prevalent in Sacramento.
The only friend in Glenn’s camp is Rickey, whom Glenn intends to phase out of his life. Glenn does not share the news of Rosie’s pregnancy with Rickey, although Rickey figures it out. Rickey, the orchestrator of this trip, manipulates Glenn into leaving LA to take his father’s ashes to Sacramento. “I knew he would play the dead-dad card!” gripes Glenn, asking Rosie permission to leave her for a day. We know something is wrong when Rickey scoops dirt into a tennis ball container to pose as his dad’s ashes.
Throughout the road trip, the friends are out of sync. Rickey continues to extract information from Glenn, while his true intentions regarding a visit to Sacramento remain unclear. Their disconnect is similar to polarizing magnets; we wonder if they are suitable friends.
Two flirtatious women, Arielle and Jess (AJ Mendez and Iman Karram), relieve Sacramento‘s building tension. Professional fighters, the women show off their gym with a squared circle for boxing. Rickey and Glenn connect over boyhood memories of play-fighting and broken wrists, reenacting the WWF’s signature stunts. This joyous play doesn’t last long.
When Rickey’s lies become evident, Glenn confronts him, insisting Rickey needs professional help. A self-help amateur, Rickey accuses Glenn of projecting. Rickey is not wrong, but lacks the necessary credentials (and possibly mental stability) to make a diagnosis. On the Sacramento River, a waterway known to locals as a death trap for those swimming without life jackets, Rickey and Glenn continue their relationship of drowning one another.
On the other hand, the women in Sacramento accept life’s undertows. Seven months pregnant, Rosie handles Glenn’s neurosis with ease but makes clear, “I shouldn’t have to take care of you right now.” This message is repeated by Tallie (Maya Erskine), Rickey’s real reason for driving to Sacramento.
A single mother, Tallie listens as Rickey grapples with what he wants in life. Tallie, however, clarifies that she can’t care for her child while fixing Rickey. The message to these man-children: it’s time to get it together, grow up, accept the loss of control, and move into unknown territory.
This is what Sacramento is to LA locals. It’s unimaginably different from familiar ground. Our summers are uncomfortably hot, and our city is dull. Our California counterparts, hilly San Francisco and glitzy Los Angeles, have technology and movie studios. We’re paper-pushing government workers, suburbs, and farms. Sacramento, as Lakers coach Phil Jackson stated in 2002, is “Cowtown”.
Angarano doesn’t present Greta Gerwig-loving shots of the Tower Theater’s neon lights at twilight. Nor does he show Sacramento’s inclusive nightlife and vibrant arts and food scene. Even in 2025, we’re still Cowtown. That’s okay. We embrace our reputation, often ringing cowbells at our opponents during basketball games. As a Bay Area transplant currently living in Sacramento, I understand the punches LA, San Francisco, and Sacramento take at each other. It’s all in good fun.
Self-knowing laughter crossed the theater as Glenn described our home as a city he has no desire to visit. While our town isn’t glamorous, it is the perfect setting for Glenn and Rickey’s crisis. Like impending adulthood, Sacramento appears far away, dull, unimaginable, risky, uncool, but not an unreasonable destination.
“We’re closer than you think,” Rickey says of the six-hour distance. “We’re closer than you think,” he repeats, honing in on the metaphor to Glenn’s annoyance. Yes, we get it. Sacramento is more than flat landscapes and long, dull drives to nowhere. Like parenthood, Sacramento is a mindset not too far from everything you know. Just relax; it’s part of the journey. Hey, it’s not like you’re stuck in Fresno.