Osmosis Jones

I had never heard of Osmosis Jones before, but I grew up watching the animated series based on this movie so I went into it with excitement and a nostalgic drive.

What I got was rather mixed. Let me explain.

The live-action parts pretty much sucked in my opinion. This guy named Frank (Bill Murray) is a single father taking care of his daughter and is a really unlikable father figure. How are we supposed to sympathise with a lazy and egotistical doof? I never felt sorry for him one minute. Mix that with gross-out humour which wasn't even helped the slightest by Bill Murray who is usually really funny.

Enough said about that, because the animated segments were actually pretty awesome. The world inside Frank's was impressive by how it was crafted. How it functions by having a whole community run by a mayor (William Shatner) and a police force of white blood cells and a lot of real-life city stuff showcased a lot of creative effort was put into it.

It centers on a white blood cells Osmosis Jones (Chris Rock) who is that kind of cop who does things his own way and the others at the police station do not approve of his ways, but he is later assigned to a new case with a partner to keep him on track, a cold pill named Drix (David Hyde Pierce). Sure, it follows all the buddy cop movie clichés with nothing new added, but the world they must explore and the colorful characters they meet make it entertaining albeit predictable.

Speaking of the colorful cast of characters, the most interesting and memorable of them all has to be the villian Thrax (Laurence Fishburne) who is menacing and merciless and has a deathcount very high for a PG rated movie.

Without being boring I found that Chris Rock and David Hyde Pierce seemed to do their usual schtick with Rock being hip and a loudmouth and Hyde Pierce doing his quirky and excentric british gentleman voice. But Fishburne surprised me. He could as easily just have put on his Morpheus voice, but he didn't. I'll give him more credit for that.

The live-action segments is the movie's biggest drawbacks with an unlikable main character and lowbrow humour as you would expect from the farelly brothers, and frankly (no pun intented) the animated segments aren't perfect and the transitions between the two don't always work.

But overall Osmosis I found Osmosis Jones enjoyable, but flawed. I understand why it failed in theaters, but I have seen so much worse elsewhere.

Okay, I think I've found the Sadly Underrated Movie of the Year.

I think that, between this and "the Iron Giant", Warner Brothers Animation has GOT to spring for a better promotion department. Really, all they'd have to say is something like: "We just let the creators of 'Something About Mary' and 'Dumb and Dumber' make their own cartoon. Brace yourselves."

All complaints aside, and none of them are really the movie's fault, this is one of the most inventive animated films I've seen in a very long time. The characters and backgrounds are allowed to look and move in ways that are downright refreshingly bizarre. The visuals are very imaginative. The humor, while funny, is still very much what you'd expect from a Farelly Brothers movie that takes place inside a very sick man, so I wouldn't recommend it to little kids or the weak of stomach. If you have a little future A+P major, however, this is going to blow their mind. Give it a look!

Whoever made this has a big imagination about what goes on inside the human body. It's very witty and smart. The whole rookie cop cliche who messes up and is THIS close to being pulled off the force and has a hunch a teams up with an unlikely buddy and ends up being right (for example, Rush Hour) is being given a whole new twist. The Farrley Brothers have done it again- and made a solid B+ stand out comedy. B+, 8/10

When you mention the title of this film to someone, they just look at you and say "What?".

Yeah, nobody went to see this film when it came out. I think it's because how do you market a film like this? Since this takes place in the human body, there's all kinds of gross out humour in it. Some of it is too much for a PG rated film.

That's my biggest problem with this film and why it wasn't marketed very well. It's gross. The scene where the nose dam breaks and a giant tidal wave of snot comes out is not what you're mean to see in a family film. Especially on the big screen. The scene where Frank vomits on the teacher and it is shown in a newspaper headline, we actually see the vomit. You don't show people vomiting in a PG film. Not only that, but it's part of the story. Making gross out gags part of the story is not a good idea.

Also, the scene where the zit is ready to pop, we get a big giant close up on it which is enough to make anyone cringe.

It's almost like Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. A show loaded with gross out humour. But that was for adults. This is meant to be a family film.

Now, the stuff I do like about it; the animation is great, it's very creative, (making the stomach the airport, the brain is city hall, the armpits are the steam room, I could go on)Laurence Fishburne was fantastic as Thrax. I kept forgetting it was him. Even if you don't like this film, you have to admit, Thrax is awesome. The music's great too. I like all the body puns as well.

Not a film for everyone, but has gained a cult following on DVD.

As an aesthete, this movie goes against everything I stand for, but I found it nonetheless very entertaining. It was like a peculiar yet satisfying mix between the Incredible Journey, Toy Story, and Lethal Weapon or Rush Hour (the whole loose-cannon, loner cop with a new partner bit).

I found the idea rather original: the human body is like a body of government, the cop is a white blood cell, the "president" was the cell whose will was that of the man (Bill Murray), the villain is a virus who hangs out in seedy areas of the body with shady characters, the bladder is a sort of train station/airport... clever stuff.

I did have issues with the "What a zit- I mean, what is it?" part, though: it landed on her lip! Wrong! I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that. Molly Shannon is quite a sport. 7/10