ANALYZE THIS

Cole's Rating: ★★ ½

Director: Harold Ramis

Year: 1999

Cast: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal

Genre: Comedy/Crime

MPAA Rating: R

        Okay, here’s the upside: Analyze This is an often humorous gangster comedy for those who can’t stomach titles like Goodfellas. And here’s the downside: it’s lazily scripted, and can’t play out for it’s full running time with the little idea that it had. So when you add these things together, and throw Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal into the mix, you get what is Analyze This.

        I do give Analyze This's producers kudos, as I’m not a filmmaker myself, and can’t imagine how hard it is to make a gangster comedy that’s not too over-the-top, and not entirely stupid. While you watch any gangster movie, the only room for laughter is the mafia laughing at their victims... With this, it’s different. What you’re laughing at is a ordinary psychiatrist (Crystal) being constantly interrupted and “kidnapped” from several moments in his life (which happens to be the several attempts he has at having his wedding) by a mob boss (De Niro) who seeks psychiatric help. That is until the repetitive cycle gets annoying after the second time the same event happened, due to not only the repetitious material, but also due to Lisa Kudrow’s (who played Crystal’s wife) meager, and stressful acting, of which a film of this nature could not—and did not—handle well.

        While it still has all of the qualities of your average gangster movie (bad language, violence, and a man battling his inner self), these qualities don’t take as heavily because they’re dulled with its comedic factor; in other words, it’s more light-hearted, if you will. And that’s not a bad thing, but all things considered, you can’t get “into it”. When I say “into it”, I mean you can’t yearn to continue to watch it; you can’t sit down, and thoroughly enjoy it; and most of all, you can’t love it. The reason being that it hardly offers anything! It’s the bare bones of a script, and that’s too bad, because it had a great opportunity. You’ll laugh, but you’ll also roll your eyes. With a better script, it could have achieved much more. And there you have it; I just “analyzed this”.

-Written by Cole Pollyea