director
Harold
Ramis
screenwriters
Peter Tolan
Harold Ramis
Kenneth Lonergan
story by
Kenneth
Lonergan
Peter Tolan
producers
Jane Rosenthal
Paula Weinstein
cinematographer
Stuart Dryburgh
music
Howard Shore
editors
Craig P. Herring
Christopher Tellefsen
cast
Robert De Niro (Paul Vitti)
Billy Crystal (Ben Sobol)
Lisa Kudrow (Laura MacNamara)
Chazz Palminteri (Primo Sidone)
Joe Rigano (Manetta)
Joe Viterelli (Jelly)
Richard Castellano (Jimmy Boots)
Molly Shannon (Caroline)
Max Casella (Nicky Shivers)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 103m
u.s.
release: 3/5/99
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other harold
ramis films
reviewed on this website:
- analyze
that
- bedazzled
- the ice harvest
- multiplicity
|
When
Robert De Niro has a good time (which isn't nearly often enough),
he spreads the fun around. In Analyze This, the belly-laugh
new comedy directed by Harold Ramis, De Niro looks as relaxed
as he does in any Martin Scorsese film. His character here --
Paul Vitti, an anxiety-stricken mobster in need of therapy --
is a synthesis of several of his other characters; he knows that,
and we know that, and we're all in on the joke, yet De Niro's
genius is that he doesn't let on that he knows. He plays Paul
more or less straight; he's funny in the same way he's funny
in isolated moments in most Scorsese movies (some of us still
quote from his great Casino
blueberry muffin tirade), yet here he also has an ordinary nebbish
to bounce off of. In all, it's De Niro's freshest work since
a similar turn in Midnight Run.
Analyze This is fluff, and probably inconceivable without
De Niro, but it's been delivered by people who know what they're
doing. Harold Ramis has become a solid actor's director -- he
got four great performances out of Michael Keaton in Multiplicity
-- and he hasn't lost the scrappy comedic instinct that distinguished
his debut, Caddyshack. The script, which is credited to
Ramis, Ken Lonegan and Peter Tolan, isn't especially original;
recent projects with the same premise include the National
Lampoon cable movie The Don's Analyst and the HBO
series The Sopranos -- both of which explore the absurdity
of a mobster in therapy. What Analyze This has is De Niro
as a mobster in therapy, and Billy Crystal as his shrink. It's
a one-joke movie, but it's an awfully good joke, told here by
experts.
As the neurotic shrink terrified of his patient, Woody Allen
might have been more on-the-nose, or even De Niro's Midnight
Run costar Charles Grodin. But Crystal is an old hand at
scoring meek laughs off of hardened icons -- his rapport with
Jack Palance was the only reason to see City Slickers
-- and he stays in character as Dr. Ben Sobol, bearded and soft
in the middle, worried about his impending marriage (to Lisa
Kudrow) and secretly resentful of his famous shrink dad. As the
shrink's and the patient's lives intersect, they both fall apart
and put each other back together, each doing things he never
imagined doing. Crystal is at his funniest when bluffing at a
climactic meeting of the families; introduced as Paul's consigliere,
Ben draws on the same gangster-movie mythology that everyone
else in the room (including Paul's scowling rival, played by
Chazz Palminteri) follows to the letter.
There's sterling support throughout -- Kudrow, with her distinctive
wobbly timing; Joe Viterelli as Paul's seen-it-all right-hand-man;
Palminteri, playing his role even straighter than De Niro and
getting his laughs from our Bronx Tale associations. But
you can't really talk about Analyze This without talking
about De Niro, who's not only funnier but also more moving than
he's been in a while. Paul's first crying-jag scene is hilarious;
in a later tearful scene with more serious undertones, I was
afraid people in the audience would be conditioned to laugh at
Paul's tears anyway. Nobody did. It's a fully rounded performance,
not a novelty.
Harold Ramis is a good idea man and good with actors, but he
usually lets things slip in the last act; Analyze This
sort of sputters to its pat conclusion, leaving some things unresolved.
It could be that Ramis has so much fun with his movies that he
doesn't want them to end; he should take a page from Palminteri's
character and have someone look up "closure" in the
dictionary for him. But if he can't sustain his inventiveness
to the end, at least he has more going on in the bulk of his
movies than your average Ivan Reitman comedy or teen comedy.
At its best, this is a gangster comedy to put alongside Wise
Guys and Married to the Mob (and light years ahead
of Mafia!) -- a comedy, like the best gangster dramas,
that's more about attitude and temperament than about whacking
people. |