Analyze This

Robert De Niro is to method acting what Mark McGwire is to home run hitting. That’s why watching De Niro taking a turn at comedy would be the equivalent of seeing McGwire play quarterback for the St. Louis Cardinals football team.

Last year, De Niro made a cameo appearance on "Saturday Night Live" in a comedy skit with fellow gangster movie actor Joe Pesci. That’s why it was no surprise to see him appear in Analyze This with comedian Billy Crystal.

De Niro plays Mafia kingpin Paul Vitti, a role that will remind some viewers of John Gotti. It seems Vitti is experiencing anxiety attacks after an assassination attempt that takes the life of a close associate. Through a chance encounter, Vitti becomes the exclusive patient of New York psychiatrist Dr. Ben Sobol (Crystal).

The first hour of the film is fun to watch, with lots of shrink humor. Crystal’s performance is restrained for a change, which is good. DeNiro is funny without really trying that hard to be funny. The language, however, is quite coarse, and there are several violent scenes. Analyze This does not pull any punches, despite its lighthearted approach.

Crystal and De Niro play off each other like a natural born comedy team, with funny exchanges as the shrink tries to relate to the gangster’s problems with Oedipal references to his mother and father. "You ever seen my mother?" is Vitti’s retort.

The scene stealer, however, is a recognizable character actor named Joe Viterelli, who plays Jelly, Vitti’s right hand man. He’s a ruthless henchman who generates the most laughs from the audience for just being himself, a lovable killer. Lisa Kudrow, who plays Sobol’s frustrated fiance, is strictly a one-note character who adds very little to the mayhem.

Unfortunately, the movie unspools in the second half. Crystal is ineptly bad playing a gangster at a crime syndicate meeting, and the laughs slow down to a crawl. Director Harold Ramis, who brought us Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, just seems to run out of clever ideas to close out the film. Still, the first half of Analyze This earns it a passing grade.