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'Analyze That'

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Starring: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow
Director: Harold Ramis
MPAA rating: R for language and some sexual content
Running time: 95 minutes
Release date: December 6
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"Analyze That"

'Analyze That' Plays Like a Disorganized Comedy Crime

Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros.

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By Bob Strauss
Los Angeles Daily News

Posted: December 5, 2002

"I'm grieving; it's a process," Billy Crystal's nervous psychotherapist Ben Sobel, whose unloved father just died, says 800 times or so in "Analyze That." It's not even funny the first time, but boy, as a tagline for this going-through-the-motions sequel, it couldn't be more apt.

I'm grieving for the very funny comedy "Analyze This," a movie that not only marked the start of Robert De Niro's late-career blossoming as a master comedian, but a good inoculation against all the overpraising that that other mobsters-and-psychoanalysis show, "The Sopranos," soon received.

I don't like the process.

All "Analyze That" proves is that there is really only one movie's worth of decent gags to be gleaned from the premise. Crystal, De Niro and co-writer/director Harold Ramis strain here and rarely ring the laugh bell.

"That's" plot, convoluted as it is, essentially reverses the valances of "This" by turning De Niro's mob capo Paul Vitti, who had essentially reformed at the end of the first movie, back to his old ways while giving sensitive Sobel an opportunity to get in touch with his inner thug. It's a far less persuasive conceit than the original's was, and the story line's details, which Ramis concocted along with Peter Tolan and Peter Steinfeld, follow that same unfortunate tack.

Vitti, who has become a model prisoner in Sing Sing, is suddenly the target of assassination attempts. Desperate to get out alive, he sets to doing impromptu "West Side Story" song-and-dance numbers. This has the desired effect; the feds coerce Sobel into examining his former patient and, when the good doctor is fooled into declaring Vitti schizo, taking outpatient custody of the mob boss in his suburban New Jersey home.

Why the FBI thinks this is a good idea never washes, but the excuse is that there's a gang war between Vitti's former family and a rival Mafia clan, and having him loose will help somehow, some way. All Vitti wants to do is find out which side is trying to whack him and, um, make up for lost time (one of the few funny bits is an extended, wall-shaking reunion between Vitti and an old girlfriend in the Sobels' guest bedroom, which adds to the already substantial consternation of Ben's wife, Laura, played by the returning but generally wasted Lisa Kudrow).

A late-in-the-game subplot involves Vitti finding gainful employment as a technical adviser on a "Sopranos"-like TV show (Anthony LaPaglia, being himself, portrays the Italian-Australian star of the series). This is stuff, obviously, of rich comic potential, but which gets woefully dissipated as Vitti just uses the show for cover to re-establish his former gang.

Another missed chance involves the casting of Cathy Moriarty-Gentile as the black widow who's taken over Vitti's mob family. The iconic recasting of the two "Raging Bull" stars with their characters' power balance switched should have been good for a trove of ongoing movie in-jokes, but Ramis and his writers were apparently incapable of coming up with even one.

Instead, the movie slides off toward implausible caper plans and telegraphed double crosses, leaving some very funny people struggling to gain comic traction with their feet mired in cinematic cement.

It is to grieve for.

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