"There's an art to being incidental", says Abe Polin, king of the Hollywood extras, and here's a case in point. This gentle, affectionate comedy is nothing more than incidental entertainment, but it works, thanks to the textbook timing and genuine rapport between Alan King and Billy Crystal as Abe and his estranged son Abbie, who wants to mend fences with the man he calls "a professional embarrassment" after suffering a mild heart attack (brought on by a chronic lack of attention). The sentimental attachment to all those noble, nameless Hollywood extras is like a page borrowed from Frank Capra's scrapbook, but if the film tugs the heartstrings a little too hard at least it compensates by not force-feeding the humor, settling for smiles instead of belly-laughs. Abbie's sensitivity to his father's eccentric behavior can be tiring, and Jobeth Williams' gratuitous role (the concerned girlfriend) is simply irritating, but where else can you expect to meet the man who invented 'the courtroom wallah'?
Review of Memories of Me
