Journal of a Sabbatical

March 13, 1999

analyze this

I wanted to see Shakespeare in Love and Nancy wanted to see Analyze This!. Nancy prevailed and I'm glad she did. I haven't laughed so hard in some time.

DeNiro is very funny. Funnier than Billy Crystal.

The ads and trailers for this flick kind of set an expectation that it's going to be a sendup of all the mob clichés and the shrink clichés and nothing more, but it turns out to be a pretty good male bonding story.

DeNiro plays mob boss Paul Vitti who starts having panic attacks when he takes over from his mentor who's just been whacked two weeks before a big meet of all the bosses. He decides he needs a head doctor as he calls it, and his bodyguard has the business card of Dr. Ben Sobol (Billy Crystal) who accidentally rear-ended the bodyguard's car. Vitti goes to Sobol's office and demands that Sobol fix him in two weeks. Hijinks ensue.

DeNiro is very believable as the stressed out Vitti. Crystal is a little less believable but pretty good.

After we got home I read the review in New York Magazine. Basically the reviewer was expecting it to be more of a sendup and was disappointed at the male bonding plot. Whereas that's what I liked about it.

Later on, leafing through the rest of the New York Magazine I read that Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's latest film, Devil's Island, is finally coming to the US. It opened this weekend in New York. Surely it will open in Boston soon. Well, I mean in Cambridge in the art houses. I can hardly wait to see it. If it's half as good as Cold Fever and Children of Nature, it'll be worth seeing.