Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal remember Analyze This being a true mob hit

Last Updated on June 21, 2024

It’s been 25 years since mob boss Paul Vitti sat on psychiatrist Ben Sobel’s couch, giving enough laughs to make Analyze This one of the biggest hits of 1999 – much to the surprise of its stars. Analyze This leads Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro recently sat down for a discussion of the movie at De Niro Con (a tribute to the actor at the Tribeca Film Festival) to reflect on the mob comedy’s box office success.

Analyze This made its mark as early as opening weekend, beating out its fiercest competitor, Cruel Intentions, by $5 million, taking #1 (a position it held the following week as well) – and Crystal and De Niro didn’t even have to make out! As Crystal remembered, “The box office was coming in, and it was like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. We’re crushing them!’ It was one of the great nights of my life, to share this with this man, that we made this movie together and loved working with each other and made something that here 25 years later people still enjoy and laugh at.”

De Niro added his own memories of Analyze This’s opening weekend. “The fact that it does well means people see it. So, it equals that…I wasn’t worried about it. I was just having a nice opening night party and then I started hearing that it was doing quite well. So of course we were happy about that. It went to another level that we had not expected.”

The discussion also led to the fact that there are definitely some comparisons to be drawn to The Sopranos, which debuted that same year, primarily due to Tony Soprano having frequent therapy sessions of his own. The HBO series even referenced Analyze This in the season two episode “Guy Walks into a Psychiatrist’s Office…”

Such a success Analyze This was that it spawned a sequel three years later. However, that movie only made $32 million domestically – less than its predecessor made in just its first two weeks. Now, that movie was pretty unnecessary but it does feel like Analyze This is quite underappreciated now. It’s quite funny and helped reiterate that De Niro can do comedy if the material is right and he wants to commit to it, just as he would with the following year’s Meet the Parents, which ended up being one of 2000’s highest-grossing movies.

Are you a fan of Analyze This? What do you think its legacy is 25 years later?