Analyze This (1999, DVD)

Imagine yourself in the following scenario: You're a family shrink who's just picked up a new client who really needs your help. Unfortunately, the family your patient belongs to is not the kind you had in mind when you put that word on your resume. So you find yourself in the position of being forced to choose between doing your job and maybe sleeping with the fishes or telling the patient off and then sleeping with the fishes. Gives new meaning to the term "between a rock and a hard place".

That is probably the best plot summary of the 1999 hit comedy Analyze This that I could do without giving away important plot details that must be surprising in order to work. So I will simply say that Analyze This worked well because it revitalized the careers of an actor and a director and offered the viewers a load of laughs along the way.

Now the concept of Analyze This (Mobster has issues so he goes to see shrink) was not a novel concept at the time, despite what the people behind the movie would like you to believe. At the same time this movie was released, HBO had just unleashed The Sopranos on us and that show featured a similar concept. Not to mention that the year before, we had been subjected to the horrendous Parody movie of Mafia, which sank in theaters after undeservingly escaping the direct to video market.

What made Analyze This work is the fact that it featured two stars who had acting credentials and a director who knew how to handle comedy. Yet one of those stars and the director had both seen better days at the time this movie was dropped on the cinematic world. Billy Crystal had started the 1990s off on a strong note with the original City Slickers, yet by the end of the decade he was acting in horribly limp comedies like Father's Day and My Giant. And Harold Ramis who had helmed the second Ghostbusters movie and Groundhog Day had largely been content to coast for a good part of the decade on junk like Stuart Saves His Family and Multiplicity.

Plus there is also the issue of the fact that the genre known as the Parody movie was pretty much dead at the time Analyze This hit theaters. The master of the genre Mel Brooks had pretty much been kicked out of Hollywood after making pap like Dracula Dead And Loving It while the previous year had given us the aforementioned Mafia and Leslie Nielsen's Wrongfully Accused.

Despite all these odds, Analyze This manages to transcend its one-joke premise and stand as one of the funniest comedies of the past 4 years or so. That's a credit to the script by Ramis and the performances by Crystal and Robert DeNiro.

Ramis's script loads the film with plenty of laughs. Real laughs, not laughs based on toilets and people getting bashed over the head. For an example of the kind of laughs you'll find in Analyze This imagine what would happen if you accidentally rammed a car that was driven by mobsters and there was a body hidden in the trunk. A scene like that could be quite funny if done right. Sufficient to say that Analyze This does it right. That's just one of several big laughs you will find in this movie along with a few chuckles as well. Also Ramis understands that the best way for humor to work in a situation like this is for the characters to be unaware that they are in an absurd situation. As humorist Roy Blount once put it: "He chuckled is a technique to avoid" and Analyze This skillfully steers clear of that technique.

Then there's Billy Crystal's performance as psychiatrist Ben Sobel. Sobel is the straightforward psychiatrist on the verge of getting married who suddenly finds himself forced to deal with a client he was not prepared to deal with. The way he deals with him is quite funny.

The same goes for Robert DeNiro as mobster Paul Vitti. Vitti is a sort of compendium of previous DeNiro characters such as Travis Bickle and most obviously Don Corleone. Yet DeNiro plays him in a way that never suggests a retread. There are a few moments where he threatens to go over the top (the Merrily Lynch commercial scene) yet for the most part he keeps the character in just the right position.

In addition, there are also good performances by Chazz Palminteri as a rival mobster and Joe Viterelli as Vitti's henchman Jelly.

Analyze This succeeds by being a smart comedy in an era of dumb comedies. At a time when we've got Sandler and Schneider producing junk for the teenagers, it's good to see that some people remembered to make a few comedies for the adults as well. Thank you to Ramis, Crystal and DeNiro. My hat's off to you guys.