Film

Analyze This

Name: Analyze This
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Released: 1999
Cast: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri, Kresh Novakovic

Robert De Niro spends the whole film gleefully undercutting every mob-boss role he's ever played, dissolving into panic attacks and tears while Billy Crystal's harried therapist tries to keep him functional before a gang war erupts. It's a broad, high-concept comedy that runs almost entirely on the pleasure of watching De Niro be vulnerable instead of terrifying — gangster-movie iconography turned gently, cleverly inside out.

TMDb rating

6.5

If you liked this

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John Cusack's assassin books emergency sessions with a rattled therapist while dodging rival killers at his high school reunion — the same deadpan collision of ordinary anxiety and organised violence, set to a killer soundtrack.

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Hugh Grant's hapless art dealer gets engaged into a mob family and has to fake his way through wiseguy customs — the fish-out-of-water panic that fuels Analyze This, from the other side of the desk.

But Grant's bumbling-Englishman routine is doing a lot of the work, and it's a well he'd already dug deep by 1999.

Get Shorty1995

A loan shark discovers Hollywood is basically organised crime with better catering, and pivots from breaking legs to producing movies. Sharp, cynical, quotable, and full of actors clearly enjoying themselves.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Ordinary People1980

Same engine as Analyze This — a man who can't admit he's falling apart, forced into a room with a therapist he resents — but played entirely straight, as grief instead of gangster panic.

A quietly devastating family drama where the therapy scenes carry real weight instead of punchlines, showing what Ben and Paul's dynamic looks like with all the comedy stripped away.

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Midnight Run1988

De Niro, years before Vitti, doing bounty-hunter-versus-accountant screwball opposite Charles Grodin — proof he always had this comic gear, buried under decades of Method seriousness.

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The Whole Nine Yards2000no page yet

A meek dentist discovers his new neighbour is a hitman on the run and gets pulled into a scheme he's laughably unqualified for. Broad, silly, and cheerfully violent in the same key.

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Married to the Mob1988no page yet

Michelle Pfeiffer tries to escape mob life entirely, only to find the FBI and her late husband's associates equally unwilling to let her go. Punchy, stylish, very New York, funnier than its premise suggests.

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GoodFellas1990

The film Analyze This is quietly making fun of — the swagger, the paranoia, the sudden violence Vitti is trying to therapy his way out of. Essential, and it recontextualises every joke in the comedy.

But It's the real thing, not the joke — brutal and morally unmoored, with none of the comfort of a punchline at the end.

The Sopranos1999

Started the same year as Analyze This and asked the identical question completely straight: what happens when a mob boss actually goes to therapy? Six seasons of devastating, funny, brilliant television.

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Johnny Stecchino1991no page yet

An Italian mistaken-identity mob comedy from just before Analyze This, built on the same joke — ordinary man entangled in organised crime he doesn't understand — but broader, more physical, and in another language entirely.

Roberto Benigni plays a hapless bus driver mistaken for a mafia informant, triggering a farce that's sillier and looser than Hollywood mob comedy usually risks.

But Subtitles and a very Italian comic rhythm may feel like a big tonal jump from Crystal and De Niro's New York patter.

Some Like It Hot1959

Four decades earlier, Billy Wilder proved gangsters and comedy mix beautifully — two musicians on the run from the mob, played purely for laughs, the same DNA that lets Vitti's panic attacks be funny instead of frightening.

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But It's a black-and-white farce built on 1959 gender comedy that plays very differently to modern eyes.