Grade: C-

Robert De Niro may be one of the best dramatic actors we have, but of late he’s been more successful in comic mode. While “Ronin,” “Flawless,” “Men of Honor,” “Fifteen Minutes,” “The Score” and “City by the Sea” represented an unbroken string of failures, “Analyze This” and “Meet the Parents” kept some luster on his star, even in the face of comedy misfires like “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and “Showtime.” So it’s not surprising that he should, in Hitchcock’s phrase, run for cover in sequels to his farcical hits–a followup to “Parents” is in the works, and here he reprises his turn as a mobster with a therapist from “Analyze This.”

Unhappily, in this case at least, the bloom is definitely off the rose. “Analyze That” gives De Niro the opportunity to resurrect his tough-guy mob boss Paul Vitti, and he seizes on every line and grimace, but his unbridled exuberance–overkill, some might call it–isn’t enough to keep the picture from being a tired, unnecessary retread. Even the welcome reappearance of Joe Viterelli as Vitti’s loyal sidekick Jelly doesn’t tip the balance in its favor. The reasons are basically three. First, and most important, the script by Peter Steinfeld, Harold Ramis and Peter Tolan is a haphazard collection of gags that never catches fire and lacks a consistent tone. Second, Billy Crystal’s nervous shtick is even more irritating than it was in the initial installment. And third, Ramis’ direction is flaccid and halting.

The picture gets off on the wrong foot by having an incarcerated Vitti targeted for killing by some unnamed rival, and apparently going bonkers in response. This takes the form of Vitti’s prancing about while doing a medley of songs from “West Side Story”–the sort of surrealistic bit that probably seemed hysterical in scripting sessions but in the realization proves embarrassing to the unfortunate De Niro and excruciating for the audience. The plot then segues into the release of Vitti into the custody of the reluctant Dr. Sobel (Crystal) and his now-wife Laura (Lisa Kudrow, utterly wasted), who’s understandably averse to having a foul-mouthed, lecherous gangster as a guest in her home–especially when he’s also being shot at. From here the plot spins in two different directions, with Vitti maneuvering his way through mob maze to discover who’s after him and plotting their downfall, and simultaneously taking a job as consultant on a “Sopranos”-style TV show; Sobol, suffering the emotional effects of his father’s recent death, meanwhile hangs on for the ride while trying to maintain a degree of control over his patient. There’s some wayward promise in these various script contrivances, but almost all of it is left unfulfilled. All the gangland business is pretty much a washout, because apart from Vitti and Jelly the mob figures are thoroughly dull and nondescript. (Both bosses, one played by Cathy Moriarity-Gentile and the other by Frank Gio, are colorless caricatures). The television stuff, on the other hand, could have developed into some amusing satire (especially since the original “Analyze This” appeared almost contemporaneously with “The Sopranos” and was unfavorably compared to it), but what we get instead are insipid, obvious jibes, featuring an eager-to-learn Australian star (Anthony LaPaglia, good-natured but with little to do), and a typical prissy director (Reg Rogers). To see how much better this sort of gag might have been handled, check out what Marlon Brando, Matthew Broderick and Paul Benedict did with similar material in Andrew Bergman’s “The Freshman” (1990). There’s also a twist heist ending, involving an armored car filled with gold bullion, that goes completely off the rails.

Throughout De Niro performs as though he were playing to the second balcony–no subtlety here- -and Crystal is no better, flailing about as if he were doing Borscht Belt standup. (A scene in which he overmedicates himself and slurs his words at a restaurant is at “Three Stooges” level, and one begins to dread Sobol’s next mention of grieving being a process.) Viterelli’s hangdog countenance is always good for a smile, but he’s provided with very few good lines this time around. The rest of the cast is either forgettable or should wish that they could be.

Technically the picture is completely undistinguished, with the flat-footed character of Ramis’ direction exacerbated by Andrew Mondshein’s pedestrian editing and Ellen Kuras’ unimaginative cinematography. David Holmes’ generic score adds little to the mix. In sum, “Analyze That” is the sort of sequel that’s incapable even of recapturing the very modest virtues of its predecessor. It’s a stale copy of a picture that wasn’t all that great to begin with, so tepid that the out-takes during the final credits, of the stars cracking up during filming, may just be more amusing than anything that’s gone before.

D

Franc. Reyes (yes, he actually places a period after his given name), a dancer-choreographer by trade, staged the club sequences for Brian De Palma’s “Carlito’s Way” in 1993, so maybe it’s appropriate that his debut feature as writer-director turns out to be sort of a “Scarface, Jr.”–a pale reflection of De Palma’s own 1983 overwrought reworking of the 1932 Howard Hawks gangster classic. Unfortunately, as with so many reproductions, the quality deteriorates as each one rolls off the assembly line. Hawks’ film was a stellar effort, and De Palma’s wildly overdone but still crudely powerful. “Empire,” by contrast, is merely a long string of genre cliches, crammed with obscenity-filled dialogue, tied together by a stream of dopey narration and glitzed up with lots of camera tricks and metallic cinematography. Despite an attempt to toss in a curve in the final act and a concluding twist that amounts to a cheap crib from Billy Wilder (just think “Sunset Boulevard”), it’s a puerile, predictable picture whose slick surface can’t conceal its utter hollowness.

“Empire” is the tale of a South Bronx drug dealer, a charming Latino named Victor Rosa (John Leguizamo) who–in the fashion typical of such characters–decides to go legit when the trade gets too dangerous and he winds up with prospective family responsibilities after his girlfriend Carmen (Delilah Cotto) announces that she’s pregnant. Through Carmen’s unlikely friend Trish (Denise Richards), Victor is introduced to Jack Wimmer (Peter Sarsgaard), a whiz-kid Wall Street investment banker who takes an even more unlikely shine to Victor. Our loquacious hero, who’s patiently explaining everything to us in a floridly street-wise narration, gets a mite too avaricious, however, and in order to make a big “guaranteed” score borrows a stake from his supplier La Colombiana (Isabella Rossellini) and her suave henchman Rafael (Nestor Serrano)–which leaves him holding the bag when the deal goes sour because Wimmer isn’t quite what he seems. There’s a subplot involving Jimmy (Vincent Laresca), the lieutenant to whom Victor bequeaths his gang leadership, whose impetuosity threatens to escalate a turf war among dealers that endangers La Colombiana’s profits. (That part of the story allows Reyes to stage a few colorful gun battles that seem like little more than cadenzas designed to inject the necessary quotient of action into what’s actually a very stolid, talky tale.)

The aspirations of “Empire” are actually pretty lofty. Reyes wants the picture to say something about the capitalistic mentality that animates Americans at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum, and to pose the question whether cutthroat financiers might not be guilty of greater wrongdoing than the lower-level thugs who sell dope on the streets. But ultimately that higher sort of concern gets lost in a plot that ultimately makes little sense, the welter of foul language, pointlessly ostentatious music video-style visuals, gangster-movie cliches and unappetizing characterizations. This is yet another of those movies in which the occurrence of the “F” and “MF” words is so pervasive that if all of them were systematically excised, the remnant probably wouldn’t even reach feature length; in which the camera flourishes call attention to themselves without distracting us from the script weaknesses they’re meant to camouflage; and in which, when the inevitable rift between Victor and Carmen rolls around (she’s backed up by an overly-possessive mother, of course) and the guy is then found by the girl in a compromising position with another women, one can only chortle that such old devices are being trotted out in a picture that wants to seem so hip. When one calculates the convolutions that the scheme central to the outcome entails, moreover, the whole thing becomes not merely implausible but preposterous. The truly fatal flaw in “Empire,” however, is the fact that all the characters are thoroughly unlikable. We’re apparently supposed to identify with Victor, but despite Leguizamo’s ingratiating smile, he’s as much of a money-grubbing sleazebag as anyone else in the movie, and equally capable of ugly violence. In fact the story boasts a roster of crumbs so complete that though most of the major characters bite the dust by the time the final credits roll, it’s difficult to care in the least–except in one instance, when an innocent catches a stray bullet.

None of the cast fare well here. Leguizamo has been striving for screen recognition ever since “Super Mario Bros.,” but thus far nothing has worked for him; in this case he lays on the cheeky machismo and surface charisma all too thick. Sarsgaard’s an excellent young actor (he was superb in “Boys Don’t Cry” and very good in “The Center of the World”), but he’s nearly as bland here as he was in “K-19: The Widowmaker.” (Maybe big-budget studio productions don’t agree with him.) Richards does the sexy babe routine adequately, but Cotto is simply pouty; Laresca, meanwhile, does what he can with a stock part that might as well require a sign reading “dead meat” to appear on his character’s first appearance. What Braga and Rossellini are doing in such caricatured roles is beyond comprehension.

“Empire” has a lot in common with Charles Stone III’s recent flick “Paid in Full.” Both recount the doom-laden lives of friends who briefly enjoy the profits of the drug trade but then suffer from its pitfalls. There are cosmetic differences, of course. Stone’s picture was a period piece, and a gritty one at that, while Reyes’ is contemporary (or nearly so: the idea of big Wall Street profits seems a trifle out-of-date) and much, much slicker. The biggest difference, though, is that “Paid in Full” was basically a cautionary tale–not a fully successful one, to be sure, but a film that at least tried to tag a message onto its story of woe. “Empire,” by contrast, is just glibly cynical; its only point seems to be “Be careful whose money you steal,” and it revels in portraying revenge as a matter-of-fate thing. It’s just a piece of flashy trash, disheartening in terms of both its empty cinematic pizzazz and its calculated amorality.