Analyze This, Analyze That : Crystal And de Niro’s Comic Act
I am neither going to Analyze This nor Analyze That. Just pour my thoughts about these two movies that I saw back-to-back on Sunday evening. When AThis ended, I did have a smile on my face and was raring to watch AThat. But at the end of AThat, I was a lot disappointed. In fact, I felt that I should have kept AThat for another day and enjoyed the good humor of AThis; and ended my weekend on a happy note. Anyways, enough of this and that; lets get down to business.
Analyze This: I think most of us are already aware of the movie plot. But here’s a quick recap for the uninitiated. The movie is about a mafia Paul Vitti[Robert de Niro] who gets anxiety/panic attack and one of his henchman suggests that he meet-up with a shrink named Ben Sobel[Billy Crystal]. Ben asks a few insightful questions and brings relief to Vitti. The don is so impressed that he follows Ben all the way to Florida for another session, right in-between Ben’s wedding. His wedding-day is undone and Ben is exasperated by Vitti’s assertiveness. Nevertheless, he treats Vitti and reschedules his wedding. In the meantime he gets photographed by the CIA and they want Ben to report to them about Vitti’s moves. After a lot of fun, confusion and comic moments comes the climax where Vitti is ambushed and Ben takes a bullet shot to save Vitti. Ben lands in hospital and Vitti in jail.
The movie was really a fun watch. The beginning of the movie, where Ben is shown as a psychiatrist who is frustrated by his clients who come to him with their silly problems, sets the tone for the movie. The way Vitti keeps breaking into tears just cracked me up, was fantastic to see de Niro in such a humorous role. His timing was great, he matched upto Billy Crystal, that in itself was an achievement. And Billy was incredible in the movie. Whenever he made some logical conclusions based on the diagnosis and Vitti treats him as a genius, the distraught look on his face was evident. Lisa Kudrow, she was being herself, or as Phoebe of Friends. Not a single expression was new, all used up ones from her sitcom.
And yes, the Hindi remake of this was pathetic. Why do people take a nice movie filled with humor, and turn it into a horror show. The movie was titled Hum Kisise Kam Nahi, what a horrible title. Was it alluding to the ego clashes of the main leads – Aishwarya Rai, Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan and Amitabh Bachchan? Or was it to do with the unspoken contest going on – who is making a bigger fool of themselves in this movie? The Ajay Devgan character was totally not required, they could have easily done it without him. They give all such crap roles to Bachchan and expect him to salvage the movie. He and Dutt were the only good thing in the movie. If you do get a chance to watch this movie, please do not; have mercy on yourself.
Analyze That: I am not going into the movie plot just yet. I felt the sequel of the movie was forced on the audience because of the success of AThis. The characters were casual in their approach, they probably had a freehand from the director. There were a few funny lines, but not good enough. The movie starts with Vitti in the jail and Ben in the memorial service of his father. Vitti starts losing his marbles and Ben gets the responsibility of keeping Vitti under his custody. Ben also gets Vitti into regular jobs like car dealership, jewellery store attendant and usher in a restaurant. He finally settles for a job as an advisor in a tv-series. He starts instructing the entire crew, dictating the script and dialogs. But all the time, Vitti is planning a heist. And FBI gets a whiff of this as lots of underworld gangsters start visiting the sets. The movie ends with gang-bang.
The movie was quite a laborious watch, it just trudged along. Billy was under-utilized and lots of sub-plots were silly like Ben’s son becoming Vitti’s chauffeur. The movie had no fixed plot, it just went from one forced humor to another. Harold Ramis, the director of both movies, has done his best. The script/screenplay has let him down. I did enjoy other okie-dokie comedy movies by Ramis, namely Bewitched and Multiplicity. The ease with which Ramis handled de Niro’s character was good. And with Billy Crystal on his side, he could not have gone wrong.
And lastly, I did sense that one of the subplots of Welcome was taken from this movie. The subplot of a gangster making a movie and dictating the cast and crew on the sets was totally inspired.
Billy Crystal has a terrific timing and he picks up the mannerisms of the character so well. I watched this mainly for him, and he was absolutely a treat to watch. I am waiting for Billy Crsyal’s next movie, Analyze That was his last screen appearance.
Tags: aishwarya rai, ajay devgan, Amitabh Bachchan, analyze that, analyze this, Billy Crystal, harold ramis, hum kisise kam nahi, robert de niro, Sanjay Dutt, welcome
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
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havnet watched Analyze That yet. ‘Analyze This’ is definitely among the top 100 movies in my list. Insurance commercials on TV always remind me of Paul Vitti and i invariably laugh out loud remembering a scene from the movie. there are many dialogs in the movie that can routinely be used in everyday conversations and that is one of the marks of a great movie.
@Arvind Swarup Pathiki: yes, AThis is hilarious and a really good watch. AThat isn’t good at all, but do watch it once at least. after watching AThat whenever u visit a jeweller or car-dealer u will be reminded of vitti….he’s too good
Yeh Analyze That kab aaya tha?? Seriously, I kno only of AThis…I remember watching this but somehow couldn’t sit thru…And HKKN was the remake..yeh bhi abhi maloom pada….
The latest Crystal movie that I saw was America’s Sweetheart. Quite a bore it was…
Billy Crystal means 2 films come to my mind immed’ly WHMS and City Slickers in that order..
Yes Rals Analyze This was quite good & Analyze That does not justify being its sequel.And yes Hum Kisise Kum Nahin was an eye sore mainly due to Ajay Devgan.WTF was he trying to do in it?
BTW the movie also had a malayalam version -again a disaster- Bhargavacharitham Moonam Kandam.
Arthi- Analyze this was a 1999 release while Analyze That was a 2002 release.
@Arthi V: plz try and get hold of billy crystal’s ‘forget paris’. the movie was directed by him and is one of his best movies
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the movie ‘jaane tu…’ had the entire script format copied from this movie ‘forget paris’ where billy crystal is supposed to land with his wife and a few common friends come to pick them up and one fo them does not know who this guy is. they start explaining to him abt billy’s story of how he fell in love, got married etc etc.. its a fantastic movie…
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i have to get hold of ‘city slickers’ now
@ Rals: i had watched both the movies (’This’ and ‘That’) in Nandan in Kolkata upon their release. Haven’t watched either of them since then, except for a few snippets here n there on Star / HBO. but although i remember most of ‘This’, i seemed to completely forget what ‘That’ was about, untill u summarised it here.
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i think thats the true success-meter of any film, whether we remember it 10 years from its release with fondness or just dismiss it as any other ‘wannabe’.
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I watched Hum Kissise Kam Nahin with lot of expectations, mainly due to its stellar star-cast, but half-way thru it, i was literally shouting – yeh kya ho raha hai, arre, yeh kya ho raha hai…