ANALYZE THIS **½ (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers ( analyzethis@filmfreakcentral.net )
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starring Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri screenplay by Peter Tolan, Harold Ramis, and Ken Lonergan directed by Harold Ramis
Robert DeNiro is not a comedian. He used this to his advantage, in what is arguably his best performance, as Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy. In Scorsese's 1982 media-age satire, which becomes more relevant with each passing year, Pupkin is a struggling comic obsessed with talk show host Jerry Langford (a self-parodying Jerry Lewis) and the thought of appearing on his program. Pupkin's routines, however, are painfully unfunny-and he is blithely unaware of his own mediocrity. That his jokes don't sound like they were written to bomb (they're liked warmed over Henny Youngman one-liners that a Catskills veteran could elicit a chuckle or two from) is because of DeNiro's desperate delivery; the actor has awful timing in his bones.
As Paul Vitti, the head of a mafia family in Analyze This, DeNiro sends up his Goodfellas and Casino characters mostly by playing it straight: when plunked into veritable comedy, we realize just how goofy the whole mobster attitude can be. Vitti is having anxiety attacks over his station in life and an upcoming meeting with the heads of all the families. He seeks counsel from Dr. Ben Sobol (Crystal, redeeming himself in this post-City Slickers 2/Forget Paris/Father's Day/My Giant era), a psychiatrist engaged to be married to reporter Laura (Kudrow). Vitti, who is the movie equivalent of John Gotti, panics Ben at first. Ben loosens up and agrees to help after he realizes they share common neuroses over their fathers, but Vitti's request that he be "cured" in two weeks naturally puts a wrench in Ben's nuptials.
Analyze This takes more intelligent potshots at the gangster sub-genre than, say, last year's Mafia!, but it doesn't attempt to mimic the baroque visuals of The Godfather films or Once Upon A Time In America. (One reason I so adore Mel Brooks' hilarious Young Frankenstein is that it actually looks and feels like a Universal horror picture.) Stuart Dryburgh's cinematography is full of missed opportunities-Vitti's world should appear tantalizing, elegant, and slightly foreboding to Ben. Even the Italian restaurant used in a sequence that pays homage to the original Godfather looks like as generic as the pizza parlour on TV's "Everybody Loves Raymond."
The film's screenplay has similar problems. The concept is so good, so utterly "pitch-able," that someone else got there first: the film bears remarkable resemblance to HBO's weekly smash "The Sopranos." Unlike that show, Analyze This makes the mistake of anchoring its whole story on an amusing but thin premise. It lacks meat on its bones: that's why the film is half over before Dr. Sobol officially agrees to take on his special patient; that's why there are not one but two wedding sequences, both involving Ben and Laura (!); that's why Chazz Palminteri's role consists mainly of shouting "I'm gonna get that son of a bitch Vitti!" every few scenes. (He's a crashing bore (er, boor)-Palminteri (Hurlyburly) is a good actor in dire need of new schtick.) The movie really falls apart in its final third, because it has relied on up to that point the surprisingly excellent chemistry between Crystal and DeNiro to carry it through, and the climax has Crystal flying solo in a flat and endless impersonation gag. Academy Awards aside, Crystal is always funnier playing off an able co-star.
(Aside: the relationship between Crystal and his intelligent son sadly remains mostly unexplored at the expense of plot; Kudrow, alas, is also wasted in the "girlfriend" role she's too damn good for these days.)
Yet I'll remember Analyze This as being a fun movie because of DeNiro and Crystal's rapport. Crystal, who truly gives zingers their zing, is granted genuinely witty comebacks to DeNiro's numerous threats. (One can practically hear the ba-bum-ch! drumbeat after his one-liners.) Surprisingly, they both begin the film playing caricatures but end up flesh and blood protagonists. The film also features outstanding supporting work from Joe Viterelli as Vitti's right hand man Jelly. Lastly, though the script has its flaws, it's at least as profane as the genuine mob movie article-"Larry Sanders" refugee Tolan surely must have been the one who liberally peppered Analyze This with "fucks." Hearing DeNiro use the word is old hat, but hearing Crystal repeat the word is a scream.
-February, 1999
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