All rights reserved. This is a tale of two professions that have loomed tall in popular culture, the Mafia and that other racket, psychoanalysis. Well, some laughs, anyway. He seeks professional help from a reluctant Billy Crystal, who then gets squeezed by the Feds and targeted by the mob. The idea is funnier in outline than in execution, possibly because the supporting cast is limp and the direction and editing seldom pack punch.
Timing is almost everything in comedy, and timing is almost a lost art in Hollywood comedies.
Also, the script, while containing funny gags and lines, isn't sufficiently crammed with humor. Madcap it ain't. De Niro, the veteran of Mean Streets and The Godfather, Part II , easily steals the show from Crystal, whose performance occasionally glitters but seldom shines. De Niro knows the terrain well enough to spoof it. Crystal comes off as Woody Allen on prozac.