ANALYZE THIS (director/writer: Harold Ramis; screenwriter: Peter Tolan/Kenneth Lonergan; cinematographer: Stuart Dryburgh; cast: Robert De Niro (Paul Vitti), Billy Crystal (Ben Sobel), Lisa Kudrow (Laura MacNamara), Joe Viterelli (Jelly), Chazz Palminteri (Primo Sindone), Molly Shannon (Caroline), 1999)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Another mob film. This one is a comedy, lampooning a mobster needing to see a shrink because he gets panic attacks. It's a one joke movie that quickly runs out of steam, as the cloying humor soon becomes insipid and the comic situation turns out to be more ridiculous than funny. It's a star vehicle effort, so if you like De Niro and Crystal, then you have a chance of falling for the film's silly premise and not caring how inane the dialogue is.
Paul Vitti (De Niro) is a wise guy (a clone of crime boss John Gotti), he is the head of a New York crime family. He remembers as a child the 1957 Apalachin meeting in upstate NY, where all the crime families met to decide how to divide up the country. Now the families call a meeting for two weeks from now to figure out how they are going to survive. Vitti's family is in a war with his arch rival Primo Sindone (Palminteri), and he is stressed out about this and about the upcoming mob meeting.
When one of Vitti's key men gets killed and he is trying to beat a confession out of the the suspect they nab, Vitti finds that he is unable to do it. To the rescue comes the unwitting psychoanalyst Dr. Ben Sobel (Crystal). Vitti's strong-arm man, the likable giant, Jelly (Viterelli), arranges for his boss and the shrink to meet and start the sessions. He has two weeks to cure the mafia kingpin before the mob meeting begins. The shrink is absolutely frightened of Vitti and wants no part of it, which is a source for much of the film's early humor. The timid, bearded Ben (to look the part of what a shrink is supposed to look like), is getting married next week in Florida to Laura MacNamara (Kudrow) and plans no consultations with patients for that period. But Vitti tells the shrink he's great and he will be his analyst. When he has another panic attack, he tells the shrink he's still not cured after the first session and demands immediate service no matter the time or place. Vitti even goes to Miami, rustles the shrink out of his hotel bed and has some forced therapy take place.
>From here on the story has no place to go but downhill, the jokes quickly fade, and the pacing of the film drags. The film is loaded with sight gags, clashes of culture between the educated Jewish doctor and the tough-guy Italians. There are many mafia type of jokes, stereotypes of Italian gangsters, and many other routines about the mob that have been seen in a host of other mob films. The film falls completely on its face by the last scene, with Crystal imitating the mob's consillieri at the family meeting. The scene wasn't funny, believable, or watchable. I don't think the director knew how to end this satire with any credibility. The film just ran out of one-liners and ways to be irreverent to the mob, the F.B.I., and the psychoanalysts. At one point, Crystal says about his profession, when he is asked by the gangsters to be vague, that his profession has left him well-equipped to be indeterminate.
This film has the potential to be late night staple on cable TV for well into the future. The jokes might even seem funnier late at night. The film just wasn't involving enough to work as drama, but if it's a few laughs that you are after, then this film delivers. De Niro has a good eye for parody and is the best thing about the film. Crystal seems to be miscast. Viterelli and Kudrow add light touches of comedy in their supporting roles. The funniest bit, I thought, was of De Niro crying over a television commercial, thinking it was so much like his real-life situation.
REVIEWED ON 2/28/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews