OSMOSIS JONES (2001). 1 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Bill Murray, Chris Elliott, Elena Franklin and Molly Shannon, plus the vocal talents of Chris Rock, David Hyde Pierce, Laurence Fishburne, Brandy Norwood and William Shatner. Written by Marc Hyman. Directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly. Animation directed by Piet Kroon and Tom Sito. Rated PG. Approx. 100 minutes. The idea for Osmosis Jones is most imaginative: a live action-animation feature about a slovenly man and the battle his body rages against an invading virus.
It's a shame the execution of this concept falls very short of its premise. The movie is lacking and most unsatisfying.
Osmosis Jones is crude, gross, disgusting, and was directed by the Farrelly brothers - the twisted siblings behind There's Something About Mary, Me, Myself and Irene and a couple of other movies in which the humor is mostly targeted below the belt.
Not that there's anything wrong with scatology. I bet even cavemen appreciated bathroom humor - such as it was.
It's merely that with Osmosis Jones, the Farrellys humor is too juvenile, too predictable. You can almost foresee the puns just by viewing the part of the inner anatomy a sequence is drawn.
Osmosis Jones looks like one of those old health class movies gone psycho. The trouble is, the animation may please the very young, but the jokes may be over their heads, while the teen-age audience may find it too tame for their tastes.
Adults? Well, let's just say most will find it unappetizing.
Osmosis Jones plays like a 100-minute infomercial for the eat healthy foods lobby.
The live action sequences revolve around Frank (Bill Murray), who seems to be the grungiest human being in the universe. He continually looks as if he needs a shave and a shower. Frank, much to the consternation of his daughter, is a fast-food addict, eating anything - and everything - that can kill you.
He works at a zoo where the animals look cleaner - and presumably smell better - than he does.
Frank's body is invaded by Thrax, a lethal virus, after Frank eats a hard-boiled egg that had fallen to the ground. It's not gross enough that Frank picks the egg up from the dirt and plops it into his mouth. Nope, the Farrellys pile it on by first having Frank wrestle a chimp for the egg, wresting it from the primate's mouth.
Like I said, the gross meter tips the scales on this one.
After ingesting the egg, the movie begins its animated sequences. Here, Osmosis Jones (voiced by Chris Rock), a renegade white blood cell is teamed with Drix (voiced by Frasier's David Hyde Pierce), a 12-hour, painkiller cold capsule to battle Thrax (smoothly voiced by Laurence Fishburne).
Basically, what we have is a cliched cop-buddy movie, rife with all the clichés of that genre.
And this is why Osmosis Jones doesn't click. It merely falls back on tired, familiar conventions instead of creating new and exciting situations.
The jokes and puns are lame: Osmosis searches out a snitch, a former flu virus. After pumping him for information, Drix tells Osmosis, "Funny, he doesn't look fluish." And the jokes don't rise above that level.
The live action scenes are no better. Frank is such a slob, so unappealing that it is difficult to fathom how he ever married or even sired a child. He's almost a bigger cartoon than the animated characters.
Osmosis Jones is a movie that may be too violent for young children as Thrax burns and dissolves blood cells right and left.
The animation is rather two-dimensional and flat. It lacks scope and depth.
It is an unappealing movie that will leave you scratching your head, and maybe leaning toward a shower after you walk out of the theater.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on golafayette. Bloom's reviews also can be found on the Web at the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
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