Analyze This (1999, DVD)

Analyze This, we all saw the previews and the commercials where De Niro shoots up a pillow while Billy Crystal looks on. This would have been a funny scene, had it not been ruined for us by being shown all the time!

In short, this film is worth the time, but not as funny as I had been led to believe it would be.

The story
A mob boss, Robert De Niro, is having mental problems, and needs to find a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist is Billy Crystal. Both have issues which go back to their fathers.
The mob boss has a problem with Anxiety, and Stress based on an upcoming meeting of all the Dons. The psychiatrist has problems because his dad is far more successful than he is.

Complicating things is the upcoming marriage of the psychiatrist to the character played by Lisa Kudrow of Friends fame. Kudrow's character has a valid concern about her wedding day being memorable. Yet each attempt at marriage is spoiled by a very demanding mob boss.

Did I mention De Niro's character is demanding?
He finds the most inopportune times to demand counseling. In the middle of the night, during marriage vows, and even during a counseling session of another patient. He monopolizes Crystal's time. He always seems to need something else. First it is anxiety, next it's impotence, finally he becomes to scared to even go to his meeting. All these times he grabs Crystal out of whatever he is doing.

It's a comedy, right?
Yes, sometimes. It is far from the funniest movie of the 1999 which was what the DVD box said it was. There are some decent moments in the film, which I will not spoil for you, like the commercials did.

Performances
Lisa Kudrow gives a good one of the soon to be wife who seems to be extremely nervous about everything all the time. She is more worried about the memories of how her wedding will be than how her experience of it will be in the present. Sadly, she is featured far to little in the film. Her few parts are brief and she is under used.

De Niro gives an excellent performance of the Mafia don with a conscience, out to protect his family and his son from ending up as he, and his father before him did. He plays a man with emotional problems very well, and switches between extreme anger and rage to depression in moments.

Billy Crystal seems to phone the performance in. There is nothing stellar about his acting in Analyze This. His part had great potential, yet he rarely ever lived up to the comedic performances he has done in the past. Sadly, I think his funniest scene was in the bathroom, and very reminiscent of Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, note to Harold Ramis- The struggling bathroom scene has been done. The dialog between Crystal and the character "Jelly" afterwards is great, yet lasts only momentarily and much was probably left on the cutting room floor. The dialog would have been where this scene could have begun to shine.

"Jelly" the loyal assistant to De Niro, gives a great performance. He really saves this film. The heavy, old, wrinkly, mobster, protector of the don is played wonderfully, and I believe he is the highlight of this film.

The antagonist, Primo, who is causing De Niro's problems is hardly a developed character.
We know two things, he wants control of the Mafia empire, and he doesn't like De Niro's character. Why? We don't know. Why is he so angry? We don't know that either.

Next time I'd recommend Harold Ramis Analyze This before he makes another film which misuses the talents of so many popular actors.