"Okay, the faster you deliver messages, the more you can deliver. The faster you pick up outgoing messages, the more we can send. The more we can send, the better our chances of beating western union and staying alive. We're postal telegraph. We get there swiftly. We're polite to everyone. We take off our hats in elevators and above all things, we never lose a telegram."

"Wow!" I thought for a minute. A drama with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks demonstrating their skills once more. Is it a sequel to the masterful romantic comedy "You've got mail"? Well, it's about sending messages for sure. But Tom Hanks won't send a lot of messages anymore. Or he's sending them from the afterlife. It's the era before the internet even existed. These were the happy days without spam or ransom-ware. But to deliver the telegram within an acceptable time frame, the telegraph services needed young boys who could ride a bike swiftly enough. And since "Ithaca" is situated during the 2nd World War, with lots of American boys fighting on the European continent, it's no surprise most of the messages brought no good news.

And that's something Homer Macauley (Alex Neustaedter) is facing. He's betting his life on being the fastest courier on bike ever. Despite the fact that he's racing back and forth like a kind of Cavendish the whole movie, the film on its own is rather slow. Biggest surprise was the rather limited contribution by Tom Hanks. Was he doing Meg Ryan (debuting here as a director) a favor? Or was it just to stir up the former movie chemistry? In contrast, the film was hugely predictable. I could guess early on in the film which fate Homer was quickly sprinting towards. I know it wasn't the intention to create a mysterious puzzle. But I was hoping for a little surprise. Ultimately, it's once again about fear and hope. Left behind families waiting for some news from their sons who are sent to war. And this combined with the story about a boy, who's confronted with the less pleasant events in life, while delivering these messages.

Because of the short playing time, Meg Ryan failed to unravel the fragile personality of Homer in an orderly manner. His leap to adulthood is fairly abruptly after the death of his father and the departure of his older brother. A brother who writes terribly long letters while on his way to the front, in such a prosaic writing style that it seems as if he wants to win a Pulitzer prize. The occasional reading of excerpts from these letters probably was meant to bring drama into the film. Eventually, I thought it was quite disturbing. A short playing time with a variety of story lines results in unfinished and "fast dealt with" pieces. The loss of a father figure, the responsibility as the eldest son, dutifully performing a job as a courier, the disastrous reports, war scenes, the drama of an old telegraph operator and a mother who occasionally experiences "Sixth Sense" situations. And then there are a few minor (but briefly quoted) secondary plots. It's all a bit too much.

The acting isn't really bad. But it seems like everyone is groping in the dark about his character. Especially Homer's boss Tom Spangler (Hamish Linklater) is such a blurred figure. We can be brief about Ryan and Hanks. As brief as their actual playing time. It's negligible. I only enjoyed the performances of Alex Neustaedter (obvious of course), Sam "Midnight Special" Shepard and the cute Ulysses (Spencer Howell) whose cuddle factor is very high. Especially Shepard makes a momentary impression. A brilliant and intriguing character. Eventually this coming of age story during the war makes a fairly comatose impression. It isn't really vivid.

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This is a rather odd movie. You really want to like it because of some likable performances and characters, particularly the lead and his almost creepily precocious 4 year old brother.

But the movie can't decide what it's about. You expect it to be about the main character Homer, but it takes repeated and lengthy side excursions into other characters lives. The run time just doesn't support these excursions.

Homer has a unique coming of age story, a subtly brutal one. He takes a job as a telegram boy, unaware that he'll be soon delivering endless reports of dead soldiers to families. That's a strong arc, but it's only vaguely there.

It's painfully obvious where this is heading, his brother dying.

And what's with the names? Ithaca, Homer, Ulysses? That comes across as incredibly pretentious.

I know that's from the book, but it's an old book and that aspect doesn't age well.

As predictable as the movie is, it actually surprised me how much it worked the death of the brother. This was literally eye rolling to me. The movie just didn't earn this ending.

After World War II, William Saroyan gambled away all his money but he preferred to resort to hack work rather than sell movie rights to any of his novels. Not after his disappointment with the original movie of The Human Comedy. Part of it was vanity. He'd wanted to direct the movie, and MGM wouldn't let him. But it's also true that Hollywood has its own point of view and it doesn't always match Saroyan's.

In Ithaca, which is a remake of the Human Comedy (now that Saroyan is dead), the main story and characters are preserved, but to me it doesn't look like Saroyan. In the book's classic illustrations by Don Freeman, Mrs. Macauley is older-looking and certainly not an attractive but obvious plastic-surgery veteran like Meg Ryan. Grogan is older-looking too. The character brought most successfully to the screen is Ulysses, although he shouldn't be losing his baby teeth if, as the dialog says, he's four. He's remarkable.

The visuals are, to my taste, too expressionistic. The telegraph office is huge, the roads are wide, and things are too big in general except where Marcus the faraway soldier is involved. All the scenes with Marcus are crowded. That does emphasize the contrast between Ithaca and where Marcus is, but Marcus is not remote enough. Because there are continual voice-overs from his letters, I think the audience doesn't appreciate his absence as a factor. Even the dead father isn't completely absent, and although he adds a sorrowful note, this unkillable family togetherness diminishes the philosophical message that our human condition is one of loneliness and we must actively reach out.

On the one hand, I expected a dustier, less prosperous-looking Ithaca. On the other hand, I was surprised that the choice of music verged on primitivity. More Appalachian than Californian.

I think that a more realistic movie might have worked better, because of the need to carry some dialogue that can, if not handled right, sound unrealistically divorced from what everyday people really say. People declaiming unrealistic-sounding dialogue amidst unrealistic-looking scenery may be fine for the stage but it's difficult to sell on the screen.

Still, the movie tries to be respectful of the original. It even includes some salutes to matters that only readers of the book will fully appreciate-- such a mention of unripe apples, referencing a whole episode involving unripe apricots in the book. I hope that since Saroyan is no longer alive to object, Hollywood will continue to mine his canon.