It appears I neglected to send out this review! My apologies! Viewers of my website have seen it, but I apologize for my slip. I wrote this 8/7/01! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Osmosis Jones
Matinee, small snack
Wait a minute - a Farrelly Brothers movie that is rated PG? Starring Bill Murray? Is such a thing possible? Possible, yes, and, believe it or not, not so bad for the kiddies and adults. My companion (with very low expectations) and myself (not so low) were surrounded by kids in the screening we saw, and trepidatious parents as well - they were willing to go only because it was free. It was no routine antibody comedy! We laughed a lot and strained to catch all the jokes. In fact, afterwards, the more we talked about it, the more we really liked it.
Chris Rock, as the titular white blood cell, was as annoying as he always is, which was the only damper on the film for me. If you love Chris Rock, by all means, rush out and see this film without reading another word. If you don't, you should still enjoy it a lot, as we did. Bill Murray is a genius at being a lovable slob, and few other people could have been Frank - so oblivious to his self-induced plight, reveling in his disgustingness but never winking or nodding at the audience about it, and yet somehow remaining sympathetic. Fabulous.
Anatomical jokes (well-researched and not just humerus for humorous' sake) abound, as well as a general message that you should eat right and help your body take care of itself. Bill Murray's Frank is a master of killing himself through food and general bad behavior, and it is depicted as gross and awful, and deadly. He picks up a little simian retro-virus in his job at the zoo and the internal, animated portion of the movie becomes a great cop/buddy adventure comedy starring Chris Rock and, later, a pill voiced with droll heroics by David Hyde Pierce (Niles).
I only gave this film a matinee price because it stumbles a bit in the beginning of the third act, possibly due to too much attention briefly being paid to the live-action framing story. Bill Murray is Frank, whose body is host to the visual gag-fest that is the animated section of the film, and he has a daughter, a loser brother, abysmal personal habits, and some problems with his daughter's teacher. It's kind of complex for a framing mechanism, and it is only made interesting by the real story, what is going on inside his system. Inside Frank is a nonstop and very creative barrage of visual and verbal gags, some of which the sound quality obscured, which just made me want to see it again. The detail-oriented writing that went into the endo-plotline more than make up for any mild deficiencies in the exo-plot.
Jones' story is a pretty straightforward, almost formulaic cop-who-can't-catch-a-break-but-is-the-only-one-who-knows-about-what's-going-dow n story, but somehow, in this plasmic milieu, it's fresh again. It's very creative, yet very 5th grade science film (thematically) and that is really what makes it work. That, and William Shatner as the mayor of Frank.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2001 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. cinerina@flash.net Check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/ - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource http://www.mediamotions.com http://www.capitol-city.com
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