Analyze This

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

More than a high concept stretched to feature length. This is a funny and extremely satisfying comedy, the best in a while.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Crystal turns in his best (read: least sappy) performance in ages, getting through an entire movie -- most of it, anyway -- without mugging.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Ramis has made a fleet, unself-conscious, eminently enjoyable picture, where one-liners carom merrily like stray bullets, and where there's casual ease, like the drape of a sharpster's trousers, in the rapport between its two stars.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Watching De Niro take Paul through his first panic attack ("I'm crying like a woman") is an unalloyed joy.

Film.com Peter Brunette

Sure, the territory is not exactly fresh...but the chemistry between the two leads is so explosive yet assured, and the comic timing so perfect, that the cliches are given new life.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

As he demonstrated in "Groundhog Day," Ramis knows how to handle a high-concept story with unusual cleverness, and he does it again here. It helps to no end that De Niro and Crystal, despite their obvious differences, are perfectly in tune.

The New Yorker David Denby

You can see the jokes coming well in advance, but you still laugh uncontrollably.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

A funny, tightly plotted, well-conceived comedy that transcends both Crystal's '90s curse and its horrible title.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Ramis...does extract every last yuk from this lively clash of id and superego, this spoofy buddies' odyssey from underworld to Prozac nation.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

It's the most liberated and alive [DeNiro]'s been since his deluded Rupert Pupkin tried to kidnap Jerry Lewis in "King of Comedy."

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Maybe the problem with Analyze This is that it isn't enough of a Ramis movie. [5 Mar 1999]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The comedy here isn't all on the surface, and Viterelli [the bodyguard Jelly] is one reason why.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Frequently funny and occasionally hilarious.

Newsweek Andrea C. Basora

There are some moments that fall flat—the cinematic world might be a better place without Crystal's deeply unfunny parody of a gangster—and the delightful Lisa Kudrow is woefully under-used.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It's still possible to have a good time at this movie, and the primary reason is De Niro.

Slate David Edelstein

Its structure is repetitive, but each scene begins with a joyous blast of comic energy...A hoot.

New Times (L.A.) Bill Gallo

Analyze This won't win any Oscars, and its comedy is pretty tortured in places, but the pleasures of watching DeNiro onscreen never diminish--not even when he's putting the glories of his criminal past at risk.

Austin Chronicle Russell Smith

As enjoyable as it is, it's hard to escape a sense of Analyze This being the work of competent talents who knew exactly where the good-enough line was and didn't feel particularly inspired to push far beyond it.

USA Today Mike Clark

Because De Niro's performance is aptly ''Scorsese-aggressive'' while Crystal effectively underplays, one can easily sit through this bottom-line disappointment with a smile painted on, waiting for belly laughs that rarely come. [5 Mar 1999]

TV Guide Sandra Contreras

Though not much about the film sticks with you, it's a reliable piece of fluff that delivers the goods.

Film Threat Tom Meek

Analyze This plays "The Godfather" bit, fast and funny, it just picked a framework it should have refused.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The gradual dilution of fresh humor is further undercut by a queasy sense that the picture, in the end, is quietly endorsing all the psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo that it has been poking fun at all along.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Ramis doesn't reach the comic heights of his "Groundhog Day," but the acting is excellent and the screenplay offers some hearty laughs if you can stand bursts of violence and language as foul as a Mafioso's business agenda.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Enjoyable but slight— an intermittently funny, one-joke vaudeville.

Film.com Sean Means

As the movie plods on, the jokes start to fall flat...Worst of all is a centerpiece scene, when Ben has to pretend to be a mafioso (but sounds more like a cross between Martin and Lewis), when Crystal is so unfunny that you almost feel sorry for him.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Both too unfocused and overly familiar. It has enough comic energy to generate some chuckles, but even when we laugh we're always wondering why the jokes aren't funnier. [5 Mar 1999]

Film.com Elizabeth Weitzman

I can't imagine why De Niro, who is a fine comedian, is still coasting on his gangster act, and surely Crystal can do something other than play himself...it feels a little like an exercise in laziness.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A pretty woeful affair...a sitcom disguised as a movie.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Watching Ramis struggle with his two stars is like watching someone try to juggle lead weights.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

This blunt comedy suffers from poor pacing, colorless dialogue, and subpar performances by the two leads that reveal just how much a director contributes to our perception of what a star is.