March 5, 1999 | You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud, or even Oprah Winfrey, to figure that panic attacks, unseemly sensitivity and a readiness to cry out loud can be serious impediments for any mobster’s long-term career prospects. But it takes a while before Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro) is ready to accept this unassailable logic.
Being the leader of a New York crime family is a demanding job under any circumstances. And the pressure on Vitti only gets worse when he’s suddenly and inconveniently overtaken by free-floating anxieties. Yet Vitti refuses to acknowledge his need for professional help, even after he’s reduced to hyperventilating helplessness in the wake of an attempted rub-out. He is too mindful of his high-profile position as a “made man” to get touch with his inner child.
Analyze This, the story of Vitti’s transformation into a kinder and gentler good fella, gets an impressive amount of mileage from what basically is a one-joke premise. Director Harold Ramis (Multiplicity), working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Peter Tolan and Kenneth Lonergan, maintains a sure and steady hand at the wheel as the comedy takes some witty detours along the way to its crowd-pleasing outcome. And Billy Crystal is a welcome addition to the mix, providing just the right balance of slow-burn frustration and volatile exasperation. But what really makes Analyze This such a hugely satisfying entertainment is Robert De Niro’s eager willingness to satirize just about every underworld figure he has ever essayed on screen.
De Niro is a genuine hoot to watch as his increasingly anxious Paul Vitti tries to pull himself together during the two weeks leading to a gathering of the gangland clans. With a little help from his faithful bodyguard, the imperturbable Jelly (Joseph Viterelli), Vitti looks beyond Manhattan to find a suburban psychiatrist, Dr. Ben Sobol (Crystal), who might be able to fine-tune his mental health. Not surprisingly, Sobol is extremely reluctant to accept as a patient someone whose idea of “opening up” might involve the surgical use of a chainsaw. Even less surprisingly, Vitti makes Sobol an offer that the psychiatrist can’t refuse. “You don’t hear the word ‘no’ very often,” Sobol observes. “Sure I do,” Vitti replies. “But usually, it’s more like, `No! No! Please, no!'”
It takes a fair amount of contrivance on the part of the filmmakers, but the humor in Analyze This has enough of a warm-and-fuzzy quality to make Vitti seem, if not entirely sympathetic, then unexpectedly likable. Gradually, the movie reveals that both Vitti and Sobol are grappling with unresolved issues relating to their fathers. Sobol is the son of a self-absorbed, publicity-hungry Upper East Side therapist whose latest self-help tome, Tell Me What You Feel, Tell Me What You Want, is headed for best-sellerdom. Anxious to establish himself outside of his father’s sizable shadow, Sobol maintains a low profile while treating the garden-variety neuroses of his unexciting patients. By contrast, Vitti wants nothing more than to be a don just like his dear old dad. But there’s nothing like the childhood memory of witnessing your father’s fatal shooting to make you ambivalent about the professional hazards of organized crime.
Crystal is effortlessly effective in the hand-tooled role of an insecure wisenheimer whose weapon of choice is straight-faced sarcasm. The character is especially funny when, during confrontations with Vitti, his eruptions of rage are timidly doused by his self-preservation instinct. But the worm turns, sort of, when Sobol must briefly impersonate Vitti’s consigliere. That’s when Crystal gets to show off by cutting loose with a hilarious display of Marxian — Groucho Marxian, that is — verbal gymnastics. Sobol would likely describe his behavior here as overcompensation. He would be right, of course, and that makes the scene all the more amusing.
