Analyse This

A movie by Harold Ramis

With Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Joe Viterelli and others

Christina says:

Life as a mob boss isn’t what it used to be. There are the Chinese and the Russians to deal with and lots of other stress factors. After his best friend was shot and he barely got away with his life Paul Vitti (Robert DeNiro) is a nervous wreck. Good thing that psychiatrist Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal) bumps into the limousine of his bodyguard Jelly (Joe Viterelli), when said bodyguard is just about to get rid of a troublesome informant. Jelly hands Sobel’s business card to his stressed out boss and Vitti bullies his way into a session. Ben’s life isn’t a model of perfection either. He is about to get married to journalist Laura McNamara (Lisa Kudrow), but his father, a famous psychiatrist, rather goes on a booksigning tour that attend his own son’s wedding in Florida. On top of that Ben has to deal with his precocious son Michael (Kyle Sabihy) and a number of nerve-racking patients. But you don’t say no to one of New York’s most powerful mobsters and so he agrees to see Vitti after his return to New York. Vitti, however, decides that his problems can’t wait and follows Ben to Florida. Ben’s life starts to really fall apart, when the FBI and rivalling mafia families take an interest in him.

Director Harold Ramis sends up every mob cliche he could find, and I’m sure that - not being a fan of the genre - I missed quite a few allusions to the classics about the mafia. He showed his hand for comedy with movies like MULTIPLICITY and GROUNDHOG DAY. And if anybody knows how to play a mobster it’s certainly Robert DeNiro, who delivers a mercyless parody of himself. Here he can show his funny side, whereas Crystal as his counterpart remains pretty serious most of the time. Just once he can really get cracking. Apart from the two protagonists Joe Viterelli gets to shine as Paul Vitti’s stupid but loyal bodyguard Jelly. He is the ultimate ingredient of every mob movie, whose face you will recognize but not be able to put a name to.

Lisa Kudrow as Billy Crystal’s significant other is absolutely superfluous. I liked her recurring part in the TV show MAD ABOUT YOU and she is supposed to be good in THE OPPOSITE OF SEX, but in this movie you don’t see anything of that. Maybe the script writers held a grudge against her. For the record: Kudrow is 36 and Crystal 52. Not the biggest age gap in movie history, but in my opinion worth mentioning because it’s symptomatic.

Ben’s conflict with his overpowering father and Laura’s strange parents were two more things that could have been left out. That would have been better than to introduce them and then to drop this storyline unceremoniously.

All in all a very funny movie that doesn’t have to resort to an offensive and dumb kind of humor to get the desired result.

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Christina Gross