"Robert De Niro sings" could well have been the tag line for Analyze That, sequel to the phenomenally popular 1999 Analyze This.
In Analyze That, De Niro gets to warble much of the score of West Side Story, of all things. And he's actually pretty good.
It sounds funny -- and it is -- especially when he's in a prison cell belting out Maria. No wonder they call it Sing Sing. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg in the often hilarious Analyze That, a movie that happily is even funnier than Analyze This.
For one thing, De Niro's mob boss Paul Vitti isn't saddled with the morose anxiety attacks of the first film. This time -- except for a period of sublime nuttiness at the start when he dances on a table top in the prison mess hall singing I Feel Pretty -- he's all action and determination, which makes his ham-fisted reactions to the simplest situations funny. We've seen De Niro funny lots of times before, in everything from The King of Comedy (opposite Jerry Lewis) to The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but he's never been looser.
There's an easygoing give and take between him and Billy Crystal, who again plays Paul's antsy, on-call head shrinker, which makes the laughs flow naturally. This time Crystal's Dr. Ben Sobel gets house custody of Paul, who has faked his way out of Sing Sing by alternating between schizophrenic and catatonic states. The fact that Paul is really champing at the bit to get back to the old days and his old ways -- "I'm the boss," he declares -- and that two rival mob families have put Paul on hit lists don't make things less than anxious around the Sobel household. Nor does Paul endear himself to Ben's wife, Laura (Lisa Kudrow), when he loudly entertains a hooker in the guest room or wanders through the house wearing only an untied bathrobe in front of the Sobel relatives.
It doesn't help matters that Ben is "grieving" the recent death of his father, a man whom he secretly hated for making him feel second rate, nor that Ben is popping pills to get over his guilty feelings.
Strong-arm way
Meanwhile, Paul tries to follow Ben's rules for becoming a model citizen . . . at first. But his strong-arm way of doing things doesn't help him sell cars or mollify restaurant customers, vocations that wind up in disaster. Better is when he's hired as technical adviser on the mob TV show Little Caesar, a program Paul once despised. This leads to wacky moments when Paul tries to fill out the cast with real mobsters or when the show's Australian star (an unbilled Anthony LaPaglia) tries to eke out pointers on how a mobster acts and winds up with a bloody nose.
Cathy Moriarty-Gentile made her screen debut at 18 opposite De Niro in Raging Bull and here has amusing moments opposite him as a rival mob boss, a blowsy bleached blonde who outward sweetness hides a viper's venom.
But much of the fun of Analyze That comes from tensions that result when the hurricane that is Paul collides with Ben's exasperation and nervousness. Together De Niro and Crystal have honed their appealing mismatched-buddy act to the degree of polish that once spiked the careers of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as the odd couple.
Worth seeing again
It's not long before the gentle Ben finds himself being chased by gun-blasting mobsters and, for his protection, selecting a chrome-plated revolver from the small arsenal kept by Paul's old gang. "Ah, this brings back fond memories," says Paul's faithful driver, Jelly (Joe Viterelli), as he hands Ben the weapons. Jelly is a mountain of a man for whom one can easily join the words "sensitive," "sweet" and "thug" together without it seeming awkward. As he did in Analyze This, Viterelli again nearly steals the show with his unexpected swings between sweetness and efficient coldbloodedness.
Director (and co-writer) Harold Ramis sparks his sequel with jokes and situations that keep Analyze That galloping. Some gag lines are so funny you might have to see the film again to catch the zingers which are partially drowned out by the bellowing roar of the audience.
****
Analyze That
Starring: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Joe Viterelli.
Rated: R, contains violence, profanity, sexual situations.
ARTICLE TOOLS: 
