From ‘This’ to ‘That,’ the plot got lost, not the patter

In the slapdash comedy “Analyze That” Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal reunite to toss around the sort of cheap jokes that Crosby and Hope used to take on the road to wherever. As with “Analyze This,” the comedy that first brought the big-screen odd couple together, the new film hinges on the high concept of Crystal’s shrink nervously dispensing psychiatric help to De Niro’s mobster, a gangster with a potentially lethal grasp on the therapeutic process. The difference being that this time there isn’t much of a story to get in the way of the reluctant icon and the professional jester going through their well-oiled paces.

The new film finds De Niro’s character, Paul Vitti, behind bars in Sing Sing trying to dodge an assassin. He stages a phony psychotic breakdown that delivers him out of the general inmate population, a stratagem that hinges on, of all things, “West Side Story.” Subsequently (and unconvincingly) released into the care of Ben Sobel (Crystal), the mob boss moves into the psychiatrist’s house, where he endures the indignities of curfew and the disdain of the doctor’s wife (Lisa Kudrow). In a purported effort at rehabilitation, he also struggles in the everyday work world, bombing out as a car salesman, a maitre d’ and a jewelry salesman, before landing a gig as a consultant on a TV series about suburban Mafiosi mischievously called “Little Caesar.”

Naming the show after a moldering 1930s film is one of the slyer digs, even if as with so many of the setups, it doesn’t play out as fully as it should. “Analyze This” opened in March 1999, almost one month to the day before the “The Sopranos” wrapped its first celebrated season. By the time the first film hit theaters, the series had already drained the novelty from the conceit of a mob boss enfeebled by panic attacks, as well as the perils of the gangster-psychiatrist dynamic. Four years later, with the television series now elevated into the annals of pop classics, the new movie plays better than the original mostly because the filmmakers are no longer trying so hard to impress with all that sincere couch talk, which until recently “The Sopranos” always did better anyway.

Having ditched the comic-drama of the modern mobster, director Harold Ramis, aided and abetted by co-writers Peter Steinfeld and Peter Tolan, instead eases along on sight gags and shtick, keeping the film aloft by the sheer weightlessness of purpose. The jokes are delivered with all the surprise you get with filmmaking on cruise control, but Ramis and Co. seem to be having a good time and every so often they do manage to slide in a bit that’s so wily and understated it nearly avoids detection. Indeed, one of the film’s wittiest touches verges on the conceptual: the casting of an uncredited Anthony LaPaglia as the star of “Little Caesar.” A native Australian who’s often cast as an Italian American, LaPaglia blows up just the right amount of bluster as a counterfeit gangster, a reminder that even fantasies like Tony Soprano are fantasies nonetheless.

“Analyze That” is filled with such throwaway diversions. Kudrow doesn’t get enough to do other than to periodically pop in to show off her impeccable timing, reminding you yet again that this comedian, a screwball natural, was born seven decades too late. All that Kyle Sabihy, the actor who plays Sobel’s son, Michael, needs to do to register as funny is lurk at the edge of the frame, principally because he looks like the world’s sweetest soccer thug (or a very young Uncle Fester). Joe Viterelli, again playing Vitti’s sidekick and driver, achieves a similar effect simply with his refrigerator bulk and well-worn mug. Both actors are confirmation that no matter how precision-machined the jokes, comedy is always more about faces and bodies than gags and punch lines, which is why what finally matters most in “Analyze That” is De Niro.

A veritable King Kong of a screen presence as compared to Crystal’s jabbering rhesus monkey, De Niro fared badly in the first film in part because he was still in the midst of a startling metamorphosis. The actor once acclaimed as the greatest of his generation had, increasingly, been marking time in nugatory work and the comedy only seemed like another low. He’d been funny before, in Martin Brest’s “Midnight Run,” in which Charles Grodin’s neurotic accountant paved the way for Crystal’s jittery shrink, as well as in Martin Scorsese’s “King of Comedy,” a brilliant testing ground for De Niro’s comedy of menace. But never before had the joke seemed at his expense, as it did with “Analyze This.” The barbs didn’t feel aimed at De Niro’s character as much as the crazies and heavies he had inhabited: It was as if the actor were launching an assault on his own legacy. In hindsight, that seems to be exactly what he was doing. De Niro has been criticized for the poor quality of the roles he’s taken in recent years, even by the likes of “Taxi Driver” writer Paul Schrader, but more and more it seems as if he hasn’t had much of a choice.

After all, he’d reached the summit of his abilities in films such as “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” -- where else could he go? If his descent into the quotidian hasn’t always been smooth there is something worthy about the very effort. De Niro may be lining his pockets by taking on roles such as Paul Vitti, but he’s also dismantling a mystique.

The comedy of the performance doesn’t just hinge on our familiarity with De Niro’s lineup of thugs and villains; it feeds off that very familiarity, as well as our fondness for one of the virtuosos of modern screen monstrosity.

With each Vitti scowl we catch a glimpse of Jake LaMotta, a flash of the tattooed wacko from “Cape Fear.” When De Niro stares into the camera here, his rubbery features molded into a grimace of resignation, you’re not only laughing at the face in front of you but all the faces that gave this one shape.

Even when they don’t always add up, these are movies in which he can shrug off the burden of being Robert De Niro. Where the star who was Travis Bickle can again freely assume the part of the great character actor -- if only this time to ask, “You laughin’ at me?”

*

‘Analyze That’

MPAA rating: R, for language and some sexual content.

Times guidelines: The characters swear like drunken sailors or members of the “Sopranos” clan.

Robert De Niro...Paul Vitti

Billy Crystal...Ben Sobel

Lisa Kudrow...Laura Sobel

Joe Viterelli...Jelly

Cathy Moriarty-Gentile...Patti

LoPresti

Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment a Baltimore Spring Creek Pictures Face/Tribeca production, released by Warner Bros. Director Harold Ramis. Writers Peter Steinfeld, Harold Ramis, Peter Tolan. Producers Paula Weinstein, Jane Rosenthal. Director of photography Ellen Kuras. Production designer Wynn Thomas. Editor Andrew Mondshein. Music David Holmes. Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.

In general release.