Reviews: SACRAMENTO & EEPHUS

 by Rob DiCristino

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Sacramento (Dir. Michael Angarano)

Remember the last scene of Superbad? Michael Cera and Jonah Hill running into Emma Stone and Martha Macisaac at the mall? Remember how Stone has that big bruise on her face and everyone babbles about getting new comforters before pairing off? Great scene. My favorite bit comes right at the end, when Cera and Hill realize that they’re about to go their separate ways for a while and that their codependent adolescence is finally coming to a close: “Well, Give me a call, I guess.” “I have your information.” So good. That’s the crux of the whole movie, really, a disarmingly profound statement about a young male friendship that’s being forced to mature and evolve into something sturdier and more permanent, something governed less by whimsy and ego and more by empathy and vulnerability. Superbad is a stone-cold classic, and while raunchy comedies like Booksmart and Bottoms have carried its foul-mouthed torch over the last decade-plus, it wasn’t until I saw Cera in Michael Angarano’s Sacramento that I finally felt like I was seeing its true spiritual sequel.

Now approaching forty, Cera plays Glenn, an expectant dad whose chronic anxiety is making life very difficult for his pregnant wife, Rosie (Kristen Stewart, all belly and bangs). Rosie is already Going Through It as trimester three comes in for a landing, and if Glenn’s going to keep snapping dinner plates in half just because the new crib creaks a bit, then she’s going to find herself taking care of two babies before very long. Luckily, Glenn’s best friend is Ricky (Michael Angarano, who also co-writes and directs), a poster child for arrested development whose refusal to cope with his father’s death drives him to abduct Glenn for an impromptu road trip to Sacramento. Rosie’s all too happy to be free of Glenn for the weekend — Stewart’s whispered commiseration with her unborn child would make a great movie on its own — but when Ricky reveals that they’re actually going to Sacramento to see Tallie (Angarano’s real-life spouse, Maya Erskine) and the child they conceived during a fling, both men realize that they can’t keep their feelings bottled-up forever.

At a breezy eighty-nine minutes with credits, Sacramento isn’t quite a complex masterwork about the destructive frailty of masculinity. It’s the kind of navel-gazing festival fare that critics tend to refer to as “slight” or “a trifle.” But that doesn’t make Angarano and Cera’s work here any less affecting, especially as their dynamic evolves from standard “odd couple on a road trip” stuff through some more serious twists that might be better left unspoiled. Angarano resists overplaying his hand in his sophomore feature effort, avoiding the pitfalls of ego that force audiences to spend too much time with protagonists who aren’t as charming as their writer/director/actor thinks they are — Looking at you, Zach Braff and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and keeping Rickey flittering around the margins while Glenn takes the lion’s share of the character development. We’ve seen Cera play this nervous wreck a thousand times, of course, but he seems to be counting on that: It’s as if he’s talking directly to the Superbad crowd, giving us permission to take those same uncertain steps into middle age. And hell, if he can do it, then so can we.

Sacramento hits U.S. theaters on Friday, April 11th.

Eephus (Dir. Carson Lund)

Earlier this week, I was sitting in the pickup line at my son’s elementary school thinking about all the ways that his first baseball practice — which was scheduled for later that afternoon — was going to mess with our carefully-choreographed school night routine: We’d have to rush through his homework. Dinner would be later than usual. “Did I put those history flash cards in his folder? Wait, does he even have clean baseball pants? I’m so tired.” And I was. But then we got to the field, had the boys warm up, and started shagging fly balls. Then we did some baserunning. Then we worked on an infield drill: We lined the boys up at shortstop and, one at a time, a coach would feed them a grounder that they’d scoop up and throw to me at first. Some of the boys could field, others could throw. Only some could do both. I made a list in my head as I caught each ball, and after a few minutes it occurred to me that I wasn’t thinking about the flash cards or the laundry or what was in the fridge for dinner anymore. I was only thinking one thing: “I fucking love baseball.”

One can only imagine that co-writer/director Carson Lund and the rest of the Eephus folks feel the same way. Playing out over a lazy afternoon at Soldier’s Field, a New England baseball park that has seen better days, Eephus is the story of two ‘90s rec league teams facing off one last time before that park is paved over to make way for a new school. None of these guys has their fastball anymore; Most of them never had one to begin with, if we’re being honest. There are no Shohei Ohtanis on this field. No Bryce Harpers. These are accountants and truck drivers and mechanics and college students. Most are middle-aged. They’re paunchy and bow-legged and a little buzzed on dugout beers. But that’s fine, because not one of them is here to get drafted. Why, then? Why blow an entire Saturday on a game that doesn’t count, for which they’re not being paid, and that no one will watch? Well, it’s different for each of them: For some, it relieves the stress of the work week. For others, it recaptures the glory days of their youth. For the rest, it’s simply a way to mark the long, slow passage of time.

Named for the eephus pitch, a high-arching, low-velocity curve meant to throw off a hitter’s timing, Eephus is a hangout movie made for baseball lovers, nine innings of America’s Pastime played at an eephus pace. What does that mean? Slow! Baseball is slow! It’s deliberate! It’s even a little tedious! I admit it! And while most great baseball movies try to cut through that tedium with narratives built around the romance of the perfect game, the glory of the home run, or the sabermetric wizardry of a championship team, Eephus celebrates the thousand-yard stare of a bored left fielder, the aching knees of an overweight catcher, and the petty argumentation of a contested strike zone. It celebrates the old-timer keeping a meticulous box score behind the plate (Cliff Blake) and the poetic musings of the snack cart guy (Red Sox broadcasting legend Joe Castiglione). On and off the field, every one of them rages against the dying of the light — literally and figuratively — trying to make every pitch, every at-bat, and every inning last forever. For that and so much more, Eephus earns a place among the best baseball movies of all time.

Eephus comes to VOD on Tuesday, April 15th.