Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are together again, sort of, in the disappointing World War II melodrama “Ithaca,” a generous but sticky slice of American apple pie that marks Ryan’s debut as a director.
Ryan (who is barely in the film) plays the mother of one son (Ryan’s real-life son Jack Quaid) who is off at war while another, 14-year-old Homer (Alex Neustaedter, who looks like a young Leo DiCaprio), works at a telegraph office where his main task is to deliver cables informing moms that their boys have been killed in the fighting. Sam Shepard plays the telegraph operator driven to drink by the sorrow in the air. Oh, and Hanks gets a couple of minutes of screen time, in flashback, as Ryan’s dead husband. If you can’t see where it’s all heading, you’re probably wearing a onesie and wondering how the mobile over your head works.
Based on William Saroyan’s novel “The Human Comedy,” this movie is resolute about being as homey and obvious as it can possibly be. Somewhere, Norman Rockwell is thinking, “Sheesh, even I was edgier than this.”