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Analyze That – Widescreen Edition

Dr. Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal), after having done his best to counsel notorious mobster Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro) and help him overcome his anxiety is now faced with helping the mobster again. Vitti, beginning the movie in prison but with only a few weeks until his parole, has a contract on his head and he's scared. Feigning insanity, he is finally released into Sobel's care. Sobel is entrusted with this assignment by the FBI who is actually trying to set Vitti up believing he will recontact his old croons so they can bring them all down. Sobel, on the other hand, believes that Vitti is supposed to be reforming and therefore tries to help him find a job. He eventually lands one that works for him as a consultant on a mafia TV show (very Soprano's like), but is planning a massive heist on the side. ***

Of course, what we don't realize or perhaps Vitti doesn't realize, is that, with the help of Sobel - both physically and psychologically - Vitti's heist is going to turn into a scam that will rat out the people trying to kill him and end up putting them in jail - helping him, the FBI, and the new head of his mob family, Patti LoPresti (Cathy Moriarty). ***

Billy Crystal is funny; I don't believe anyone can argue that. Robert DeNiro, on the other hand, is fun to laugh at with the help of Billy Crystal. He doesn't really have the comedic touch, but teaming him up with Crystal, pioneered in Analyze This, seems to work just as well, if not better, in Analyze That. ***

The story is engaging for the most part, but definitely suffers from some serious slow time. Even though it is supposed to be funny, the time spent consulting on the TV show drags on and on. Perhaps this is understandable because Vitti needs time to develop his plan for the heist, but it really slows the movie to a crawl for a while. ***

The other part of the movie that just doesn't seem to work is the continual crying outbursts by both Vitti and Sobel. Sure, the movie is a comedy and perhaps, in a sense, this is frontier breaking work in having grown men crying on screen, but their crying comes across more as infant wailing then men expressing emotion. I felt it was just an odd mix of the actors trying to balance humor and seriousness because their psychological problems are supposed to be both at the same time - it just doesn't work. ***

Overall, the comedy makes up for the slow pace, but the movie isn't something special. It's funny, perhaps funnier than Analyze This because they learned what worked from the first one, but hopefully they will be content to let the series end with this one.

The 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is clear and mostly crisp. During the director’s commentary Harold Ramis reveals that several of his shots were too soft and that they were later digitally enhanced. Nevertheless, the picture is generally very crisp and the colors are plenty vibrant. Perhaps the movie is darker than it need be at times, but overall the video is very good quality. ***

The sound is standard, but lacks much depth, likely because the majority of the movie is just dialogue with very little else going on in the background. There are plenty of language options, but no variation within categories – you just get Dolby Digital 5.1 in English or French and that’s it. It’s definitely acceptable but doesn’t stand out as exceptional.