One of the key scenes in Memories of Me arrives late in the film. Abe Polin (Alan King), the self-proclaimed "king of the extras" in Hollywood productions, lets his son, Abbie (Billy Crystal), talk him into a studio audition for a speaking part -- Abe's first -- in a major motion picture. Abe visits the casting director, Dorothy Davis (Janet Carroll), but refuses to take Davis seriously -- every straight-faced question she asks earns a smart-ass quip or a piece of stale sarcasm, until she tells Abe, with as much politic as she can muster, to shut up.
Abe's wisecracks suddenly lose their veneer, and Abe's inner desperation and fear shine through.
This is as close as the movie comes to declaring the function of humor in Abe and Abbie's lives, but the writing is on the wall from the first scene (in which Abbie, a New York cardiologist, jokes with a nervous elderly patient about "scraping the baklava" out of her arteries). Abe and Abbie share the use of humor as a coping mechanism -- as a self-defense to guard against vulnerability in difficult situations. Their transitions, over the course of the film, will partially involve learning to be sincere with one another -- so that although the film initially hands the audience two levels in these characters, the humor eventually melts away by necessity. And even though the oddball, funny-sad mix of overtones in the first two acts (sentimental, occasionally tear-jerking family drama buried beneath yuk-yuk comedy) feels jarring, even beguiling initially, the comic defense mechanisms serve a legitimate purpose for these characters. We adjust to this style surprisingly quickly, and at the film's best, its sad-eyed laughter teeters on the verge of perfection.
More broadly, the overall picture works because its primary transition -- that of reconciliation between father and son -- feels so exceptionally real and credible, never deliberate, forced, or manipulative. It is bolstered not only by beautifully defined arcs in the script (co-authored by Crystal and Eric Roth) but by the stellar lead performances that director Henry Winkler draws from Crystal and King. The co-screenwriters spring a tragic surprise on the audience in the final act, but it (wisely) doesn't drive the reconciliation or beg for audience sympathy; by the time it finally unfolds, the script has already earned reconciliation, on its own terms, and the characters have drawn legitimate respect and empathy from us as an audience, which rescues Memories of Me from the danger of bathos. Crystal and the late King play together with instinctive smoothness and ease -- throughout their careers, they never found better comic partners than each other (they sound like a pair of old vaudevillians with a 20-year history); the two later teamed for an episode of King's series Inside the Comic Mind, but what a shame that they never paired up in a feature again. Romantic lead JoBeth Williams and Crystal also display a gentle romantic chemistry, and the film sports a funny walk-on by Sean Connery (in his costume for The Presidio). Memories of Me is a gentle and pleasant surprise, and a fine candidate for sleeper status.