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Proposing that a major New York don (Robert De Niro) might seek out a psychiatrist (Billy Crystal) to ease his anxieties as a watershed meeting of all the crime family bosses approaches, Mr. Ramis manages to make Analyze This funnier than it has any right to be. While possessing neither the comedy magic of his classic Caddyshack nor the zany inventiveness of his Groundhog Day, this latest effort is a shrewdly constructed assault on the funny bone just the same. Astutely employing Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal in the principal roles, the filmmaker combines the companionable cast with his exemplary comic-timing skills and a good-hearted script (co-written with Peter Tolan and Kenneth Lonergan). Ten main jokes score sure-fire guffaws; about fifteen supportive gags garner medium-range cackles; and twenty lesser giggle-getters keep things bubbling. The result is a requisite three laughs a minute, propelling the albeit conventional farce to often hilarious heights.
So what if it's predictable. Who cares if the likeable characters are no thicker than cardboard? Hey, Fuhhgeddaboutit! When was the last time you saw a movie that actually didn't give you enough time to stop laughing between jokes? See it with a full audience and you're bound to miss some lines.
De Niro, capitalising on his Mafioso emeritus status, effortlessly balances the role of mobster Paul Vitti on his highly decorated pinkie finger. At one moment terribly dangerous, and then suddenly, uncharacteristically, vulnerable and humane, De Niro's new age godfather is glibly conceived, his tongue properly poised in cheek. When one of his lieutenants suggests that they must change with the times, the gangster sarcastically asks, "You think I should get a web site?" But alas, the thug is troubled of late by things that never fazed him before. And it's not easy running a crime empire when you're subject to unexplainable fits of uncontrolled weeping.
This situation has Vitti's top henchman, Jelly, understandably concerned. It won't bode well for the family if the rival bosses sense this new fear. Particularly interested in this potential Achilles heel would be covetous Primo Sindone (Chazz Palminteri), the other New York boss. Only Vitti stands in his way to Big Apple domination.
Wonderfully rendered by Paul Viterelli in the film's best supporting performance, heavyset Jelly is a self-admitted moron with a face like a pockmarked bulldog, as loyal as he is Runyonesque. And remembering that he recently ran into a shrink, literally, during a fender bender that humorously exposed the mobster's Goodfellas-like cargo when the trunk popped open, the sidekick apprises his boss of the meeting. "He even had a business card," an impressed Jelly notes, a sure sign of the doctor's professional ability.
Enter Dr. Ben Sobel, up until this moment a "family" psychiatrist catering almost exclusively to bored housewives and the generally mundane of Westchester County. Actually, more correctly, enters Boss Vitti, unannounced, barging into the good doctor's office and demanding professional services. Of course, Dr. Sobel refuses to treat the hood. Naturally, Mr. Vitti insists otherwise. So much for that argument. "So, what's my goal here?" asks the frustrated psychiatrist. "To make you a happy, well-adjusted gangster?"
The improbably wacky relationship established, opposite worlds clash and the dance begins. Cultures are exchanged. In time, the crime boss begins to spout psychobabble (his enemies grow uneasy when he talks about "closure") and buttoned-down Ben gets to chum it up with the goombahs. During the course of therapy, the doc tells Paul about Freud's take on the Oedipal tale. "Those Greeks," mutters the wise guy. "I can't even call my mother on the phone since you told me that." Mr. Crystal, approaching the role from a comedian's vantage point, provides a nice match to De Niro's satirically thespic cant.
Meanwhile, Dr. Sobel has his own problems. He is scheduled to wed for a second time. But it seems that his big-time psychiatrist dad (Bill Macy) can't (or is it won't?) take off from book signings to attend the nuptials. Coincidentally, as permissibly soppy story parallels go, the Mafia boss also has some unresolved issues with his tops-in-his-field dad, a former mob bigwig who, due to occupational hazards, met an untimely end. Will the doctor and patient share matching epiphanies?
Excited about this therapy stuff, a la What About Bob the anxious Mafioso follows Dr. Sobel to his wedding in Miami. There, the zealous patient unintentionally trashes his therapist's big day when one of Primo Sindone's assassins is thwarted and his corpse does a swan dive into the smorgasbord. Here the movie gets a bit too rambunctious for its own good, slipping like an automatic transmission low on fluid. Crystal and De Niro momentarily lose sight of their emerging simpatico, the slapstick is wan, and the under-utilised Miss Kudrow as the bride continually left at the altar (yup, more than once) adds nothing new to the stereotype. Happily, once the action swings back to New York, matters tighten up again.
De Niro and Crystal's juxtaposed personalities prove funny for the same reason that we find amusing those paintings of dogs playing poker. Both scenarios are absolutely preposterous. Sheer whimsy. The thought that a cold-blooded mobster might want to abandon his innately antisocial ways to find his inner Barney the Purple Dinosaur is a soul-pleasing fantasy of the highest order. If the lowest element of our society can attain grace, who knows what else is possible. In the meantime, moviegoers sorely in need of some laugh therapy are advised to see Analyze This and let the healing begin.
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