If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what director Harold Ramis must have been thinking when he decided to take another look at the lives of the characters Dr. Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal), and mobster Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro) in Warner Brothers’ Analyze That. The sequel to the very popular 1999 Analyze This has Vitti faking a mental disorder to convince the FBI to send him to the custody of Sobel, his former psychiatrist. The FBI knows Vitti is faking, but they look the other way so they can get Vitti back on the streets and use him to round up other mobsters.
Vitti is released into the custody of Sobel, who tells him he’s got to quit the mob life if he ever hopes to resolve his boring long-simmering father-son conflict. Vitti finds his niche as a consultant for a hit Mafia-themed TV series, "Little Caesar," starring an un-credited Anthony LaPaglia. Unfortunately, the movie fails to capitalize on the alluring concept of a real-life wiseguy telling "Hollywood" wiseguys what to do. Instead, the filmmakers cram in a lame subplot that only underscores how thin the material often gets.
Cathy Moriarty plays a suburban mob widow, and Lisa Kudrow adds a bright touch in her role as Crystal’s wife. But the movie’s real appeal lies in watching the stars. Crystal shifts effortlessly between the guarded, thoughtful manner of a therapist and the scared-silly desperation of a guy in over his head with the mob. And De Niro, while he’s not that funny, puts a comic spin on the powerful mob bosses we’ve come to know thanks to Hollywood.
Some scenes in Analyze That were filmed at the Hoboken Brownstone Company on Hudson Street and there’s also a brief reference to Hoboken when De Niro’s character tells a woman he was intimate with to "Go back to Hoboken."
Oh, one more thing, De Niro sings Broadway show tunes when he pretends to go crazy. That’s almost the price of admission.
Analyze That, now playing at a theater near you, is rated R for language and some sexual content. It’s an hour and 35 minutes, and it was written by Ramis, Peter Tolan and Peter Steinfeld. q