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+ 3rd Worst Movie of the Year
+ Most Overrated Movie of the Year
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| Robert De Niro in what could look like a Marlon Brando 'Godfather' impression beside Billy Crystal as a shrink on the packed poster for Harold Ramis' Analyze This |
New York's Italian-American gangster boss has a panic attack and falls upon a psychiatrist, whom he designates his new life-saver.
Analyze This is written by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count On Me (2000)), Peter Tolan (Guess Who (2005)) and Illinoisan master filmmaker Harold Ramis (Caddyshack (1980)), whose 7th feature it was.
The basic premise isn't dumb, (and it looks a lot like what had shortly prior the film debuted as gangster TV-series masterpiece The Sopranos (1999-07))), but there isn't much of a plot to back it up in Analyze This. The film isn't really about shrink Billy Crystal's (This Is Spinal Tap (1984)) fiancée, his son, his meetings with the gangster Robert De Niro (The Good Shepherd (2006)) or the FBI, but they are all in the film anyway.
Analyze This swings between a notion that we should take its characters seriously and then utterly farcical tomfooleries, which is mixed with mighty thick cliches, such as Crystal curing over-acting De Niro, which is a joy and a blessing to him (despite going to jail!)
But the idiotic, deeply inane script and its empty construct here is the worst part of the film. Ramis really hit the gutter with Analyze This.
Related posts:
Harold Ramis: 1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Top 10: Best fantasy movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Groundhog Day (1993) - Rubin, Ramis and Murray's irresistible comedy masterpiece
Ghostbusters II (1989) - Reitman's unjustifiably maligned sequel (co-writer/co-star)
Ghostbusters (1984) - Reitman and Co. conjure up the gleeful pomp and circumstance of the 1980s (co-writer/co-star)
Caddyshack (1980) - And you thought golf was boring?
Watch a trailer for the movie here
Cost: 30 mil. $ (some sources claim 80 mil. $)
Box office: 176.8 mil. $
= Huge hit (returned 5.89 times its cost) - unless the wildly different cost is accurate, in which case the return was 2.21 and the film a flop
[Analyze This was released 5 March (USA) and runs 103 minutes. De Niro was paid 8 mil. $ for his performance. Shooting took place from May - July 1998 in Florida, including Miami, New Jersey and in New York. Box Office Mojo and IMDb mysteriously list an 80 mil. $ budget, while several other sites lists what I find the more realistic 30 mil. $ budget. It is more realistic also in light of the fact that the film was considered a hit, (at 80 mil. $ it would have been a flop), which gave a go-ahead for a sequel, the double-budgeted (60 mil. $, which is fairly standard studio practice for a successful film's sequel) Analyze That (2002), with returning stars and director, a major flop on the other hand. The film opened #1 to an 18.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it remained #1 for another weekend and stayed in the top 5 for a total of 9 remarkable weekends, grossing 106.8 mil. $ (60.4 % of the total gross). The film was nominated for 2 Golden Globes. Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to 3 notches over this one. Ramis returned with Bedazzled (2000). De Niro returned in Flawless (1999); Crystal in 2 TV movies and an uncredited cameo prior to his theatrical return in America's Sweethearts (2001). Analyze This is fresh at 69 % with a 6.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Analyze This?
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