User reviews

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!

Osmosis Jones is a comedy of human proportions, I guess. It works enough and when it works well it's a good movie. Although when you think about it the plot-line inside Frank's body (frank is played by Bill Murray with no shame in great form) is rather routine and for me was the only thing keeping this from being really good.

Still, it might be a worthwhile movie, more for kids than adults, but it it watchable for all. Various voices include Chris Rock, Brandy Norwood, Laurence Fishburne, David Hyde Pierce and William Shatner. Pleasant most of the way and sometimes cool. B

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.

How does the body work?

I've always wanted to know exactly what goes on inside my body, and I must say I had a pretty fair idea thanks to my Biology class in school.

Then I saw Osmosis Jones, which completely threw me off.

The way Frank's body works and the cause/effect situations in this movie are hilarious! Frank is seen as a huge city, such as New York or Los Angeles, and blood cells live out their daily lives. The creative abilities of the creators of this movie seems endless even though it is limited to Frank's body.

The characters are well drawn-out, and we even learn some of Jones' background (he lived in a certain area of the body and had hardly any education). Drix is a product of a cold pill and assigned to help out around the place, and we learn much about him as he explains it all to Jones.

The music in this movie isn't bad, but some of it didn't really match with the scenes. Randy Edelman is the composer, and he doesn't do a bad job. Even the rap and R&B music fit in and didn't sound too bad.

All in all, Osmosis Jones is a great movie if you like animation (especially quick-action animated fighting scenes) and imaginative adventures such as these.

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.

The Farrelly brothers are dipping into the animation pool. It's colorful and primitive animation. It's pretty good, but that's not really the problem. Surprisingly the problem is Bill Murray and live action stuff.

Frank Detomello is a slob. He eats a hard boiled egg covered with a deadly germ. And we travel inside Frank to see white blood cell policeman Osmosis Jones (Chris Rock) battle evil virus Thrax (Laurence Fishburne) with the help of Drix (David Hyde Pierce).

Bill Murray looks awful as he gets sicker and sicker. I have to ask if we're supposed to laugh at Bill? It's just gross. Not the gross out humor that the Farrellys are known for. It isn't funny at all.

The animated sections are much better. In fact I prefer they cut out the live action stuff. Chris Rock does a good voice. He has good chemistry with David Hyde Pierce's Drix. They need a few more jokes, but I like the City of Frank.

I recently rented Osmosis Jones, and I thought it was "Ok". to really understand what I mean by this, a pro/con list is needed. so here's a pro/con list. PROS: -Creative Premise and Environment (some of the body part/city comparisons were brilliant) -Good Comedy(includes several HILARIOUS Sight Gags.) -Cool Villain -Decent Animation CONS: -The Parts with Bill Murray on camera can sometimes drag a touch. -(this is the big one) The plot brings nothing new to the table. It is a by-the-numbers buddy cop movie, and we all know what's going to go down. So, don't come into this film expecting a new story. Come into it expecting to see comedy and interesting visuals.

This movie was not all that bad, however it appeals to kids who wouldn't really understand what's going on. They'd just see cartoon characters fighting, and be entertained and the whole knowledge of the body would almost have no effect on the kids.

This movie felt like something an 8 year old would think if they were taught what we're usually taught in Grade 8 about cells and all that other stuff.

I think the largest problem with this movie is that it was made to appeal to kids under 10, but it's directed at kids 13-17. So the kids who that it appeals to don't really get the full joy and benefits of the movie and the kids it's directed at don't usually get interested.

Another problem it faces is that this type of story, HAS to be a cartoon, and there are SOME people out there who think that cartoons cannot be good, so once again that age 13-17 age really doesn't take interest

I thought this movie was very good. The people leaving bad reviews are being too critical. This movie was meant to be fun. The way the inside of the body is a city, the white blood cells are the police, fireman, etc., the lymph nodes were the police stations, veins were highways, the stomach was a bus station/airport type place, and the germs and bacteria were, of course, the criminals, and so on. This movie gives a very imaginative way the body works to fight infection, as if the body was a city of people just like in the real world. You may need to have some sort of knowledge about the body to get some of the puns and jokes, maybe not very young kids will get it, but they will like the animation...this movie is even good for adults. I give the movie 8/10...I thought it was a very entertaining movie!!!!!

Osmosis Jones is a pretty good movie, it's very disgusting at times but you just have to go with it. This is the story of a guy named Osmosis Jones, a white blood cell voiced by Chris Rock. He lives inside the body of Frank, a slobby zoo keeper who's body is likened to a city: it has it's dump (guess where), power plant (heart), ghetto (liver), and even natural disasters (cramps and sicknesses.) So when Frank ingests a hard boiled egg that has been in the mouth of a monkey and on the ground, it's bad news. Especially when the egg hosts the Red Death virus named Thrax (my favorite character), voiced superbly by a evilly suave and utterly unrecognizable Laurence Fishburne. Thrax wants to kill Frank in record time (48 hours) by damaging his hypothermis gland and heating Frank up like "A sidewalk on a summer day..." Thrax snickers. To help Osmosis fight Thrax, enter the by-the-book and not particularly bright cherry-flavored cold pill Drix (David Hyde Peirce)who wants to prove his worth by curing Frank.

my final thought: The animated portions of the movie were entertaining and fun. The live action portions of the film were gross and not that funny. If it had been 95% animation, this would have been a lot better film.

This was an odd directorial choice for the Farrelly Brothers ("Dumb and Dumber," "There's Something About Mary"). It's an animated film (in parts) about the internal workings of a man's body.

The man is played by Bill Murray during the "live action" sequences. These are intercut with animated sequences that involve cells and amoebas and organs and so on and so forth voiced by the likes of William Shatner, Chris Rock, Laurence Fishburne, David Hyde Pierce (Niles from "Frasier"), Kid Rock and Ron Howard.

The cells are all animated cartoon characters who look, talk and act like humans. They live in the vast metropolis of "Frank" (Murray's character). When he feels sick, the metropolis begins to wither away.

Chris Rock voices one of Frank's defending cells who teams up with a special medical pill (swallowed by Frank) to take on Thrax (Fishburne), the maniacal germ causing Frank to feel sick.

If you think this sounds really weird, you're right. It is. But it's also very clever and unique.

The problem is that the animation is poor, the vocal talents are a bit too self-conscious and the animation is almost too realistic at time - it originally got a PG-13 rating. It's pretty seedy stuff.

The live action sequences are okay but Murray looks kind of out of it. Overall I was disappointed because I expected something funnier and cleverer, when in fact the movie dies out really quick and resorts to lame jokes like popping whiteheads on people.

Frank (Bill Murray) is a widow without hygienic and bad alimentary habits. He eats food that felt on the floor without cleaning, he does not wash his hands before eating and he eats only junk food. His daughter keeps unsuccessfully trying to correct his behavior. One day, Frank eats a dirty egg and gets a disease. From this moment on, the human body functions are showed through very funny and educational cartoons. The hero, Osmosis Jones, is a white globule, with Chris Rock's voice. The great Farrely brothers again surprise me. This funny (and sometimes scatological movie) is a great class of hygienic and human body functions. Chris Rock and Laurence Fishburne give a great performance with their voices. Bill Murry has the role of a disgusting character. An excellent and very educational movie, indicated also (or specially) for children. My vote is nine.

Frank (Bill Murray) falls victim to flu like symptoms after he eats an egg that has been in a monkey's mouth then on the ground. It's up to a white blood cell and an cold tablet to save the day. They find out it's not a flu, but the deadly new disease Thrax, who wants to kill Frank in 48 hours. Imagine "Lethal Weapon" crossed with "Fantastic Voyage", only mostly animated and dumbed down considerable and you'll know what this film is all about. Yawn inducing to adults, to intense for little kids, and not enough 'potty/puke' humor for teens. Farelly Brothers have struck out with this one. An obvious sore spot on an otherwise unblemished career. (thus far. I haven't seen "Fever Pitch", yet) Wait I'll just lay all the blame on that hack Marc Hyman instead.

My Grade: D

DVD Extras: Commentary by Animation Directors Piet Kroon and Tom Sito, Writer Marc Hyman and Producer Zak Penn ; "Frank's Gross Anatomy" Interactive Adventure; HBO First Look Behind-The-Scenes featurette (14 minutes); Voice Recording Sessions (5 minutes); Deleted Scenes (5 minutes, 49 seconds); and Theatrical Trailer

3 Easter Eggs: Go to the 'Theatrical Trailer' then highlight the "Gas Next Exit" sign for a bonus clip; select The Earl Of Hurl in the Frank's Gross Anatomy" and select "The Earl Of Hurl" highlight the Funny Bone for another clip; In Subtitles, go to the next page, DVD Credits then highlight Drix's head for an unused theatrical Trailer.

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

What was great about this movie? The cast, the crew, the story, and the animation. What was bad about this movie? Well, the animated story is cool, and even though it deals with the body and bodily functions, there wasn't anything really bothersome or disgusting in it. Which is why I was happy to take my girlfriend and her son to see this film. But during the live action parts of the film, the Farrelly Brothers returned to their true comedic film making form where nothing is taboo or out of bounds, and gross-out equals funny. My girlfriend nearly puked about four different times during the live action portions of the film. She stormed out of the theater before the credits even began rolling because she hated the live action so much. Somehow it all became my fault. Fortunately she dumped me recently, so her opinion on this film means squat to me now. But I would have to stand, as a critic, on the ground that the animated sequences of the film did not flow smoothly into the gross live action scenes. It's almost as if you are getting top-notch Don Bluth post-Titan A.E. animation, then you have to cinch up your stomach and settle into barf-and-zit-popping comedy served up Farrely Brothers' style. It just didn't mix well at all. Everything else was fantastic. The cast, the animation, the story, the soundtrack, the back-story, the overt sub-plots, everything. The only real problem was that the two parts of the story didn't blend well. It would have been better if either Matt Groening or Mike Judge had directed the animated story so that it would be more adult oriented humor, or if Ivan Reitman or someone of his ilk had directed the live action bits so that it would have been more family oriented humor. Because trying to do both in the same film doesn't work.

When most people think of the Farrelly Brothers they think more of movies like "Theres Something About Mary" and "Dumb and Dumber," but Osmosis Jones is a movie that went largely unnoticed.

This movie is great, it has a storyline like you would expect by some bad short you watch at school in health class... but done right.

What more can a person ask for in an animated world than Chris Rock as a white blood cell fighting off a nasty virus voiced by Laurence Fishburne. You also have Bill Murray in the live action side of the movie playing the unclean and gross, yet lovable Frank. David Hyde Pierce was also great as the Cold Pill named Drix.

The animation is really cool, and I guess you could sort of say it's one of the last good animated movies made, seeing as the world has been taken over with CGI (Which is not necessarily a bad thing... it's just nice to see a traditionally animated movie.) I would also like to make comment on the designs of the inside of Frank... they were pretty cool.

Of course there is lots of toilet humour and innuendo... but it's all in good fun. Some people may be a bit grossed out though during some scenes. I would recommend you don't let your kids watch this movie if they are under the age of about eight, as there are some dark themes involving death in it.

Basically the animation is great, the characters are memorable and the movie is just a whole lot of fun.

So the bottom line is if you see this in a shop... I would give a very high recommendation to rent or even buy this. It's just a really good movie.

OSMOSIS JONES / (2001) ***1/2 (out of four)

By Blake French:

Consider the Farrelly brothers. The majority of a crowd would think of adjectives like shocking and envelope pushing, to describe them, but the most shocking thing about "Osmosis Jones," is the PG rating. Originally warranted a PG-13 rating, still a surprise from filmmakers whose credits include "There's Something About Mary" and "Me, Myself, and Irene," the film finally earned the family friendly PG rating after it was subjected to a re-rating. Peter and Bobby Farrelly are known for their crude, rude, and disgusting sense of humor. Breaking free of their traditional styles, their focus is now on something a little more entertaining than gross-out humor-imagination.

Directing a wildly amusing script by Marc Hyman, the Farrelly bothers are really on to something here. This is arguably their best film to date. Only "There's Something About Mary" stands up against "Osmosis Jones," a film that jumps between live action and cartoon animation. It calculates each moment with the perfect timing. This is not a movie just for this kids, although it's perfectly appropriate for everyone in the family. This is a feast for anyone's imagination. "Osmosis Jones" creates a world we seldom see in the movies-inside the human body.

"Osmosis Jones" is not an extremely funny movie. Only a handful of plentiful laughs occurs in the film. None of the gross-out humor works; the ideas are too jumbled within other ideas to payoff. "Osmosis Jones" does play with a lot of different humor types-from a clever "Titanic" joke that practically winks at the audience, to a laugh out loud performance by SNL veteran Molly Shannon. In "Superstar" Shannon proved to be a nuisance. However, in this film she is a very welcome screen presence.

Bill Murray needs to be in more movies these days. He still has the comic connection with the audience that carried "Scrooged," his best film, to my list of all time favorites. He stars as Frank Detorri, a lazy, slothful zoo worker who would get life behind bars if hygiene was a law. His wife passed away because of a sickness that their young, but healthy and intelligent, daughter (Elena Franklin) believes evolved from poor eating habits.

Frank eats something that contains a deadly virus, and it's up to his immune system to fight back. Osmosis Jones (voiced by Chris Rock) is one of those white blood cells who serves as a cop and must capture various villainous germs and viruses inside Frank. Although not a popular individual among the world of Frank, especially with the Mayor (voiced by William Shater), who is running for re-election very soon, he does have a crush on his assistant, Leah (voiced by Brandy Norwood). After the virus, named Thrax (voiced by Laurence Fishburne), accumulates villainous help and starts on a plan to kill Frank in a record time of forty eight hours, Osmosis must work with a cold pill named Drix (voiced by David Hyde Pierce), to stop this monstrously powerful germ before it's too late for Frank and his daughter.

The movie has some very clever material-various parts of the body represent neighborhoods in the City of Frank. For instance, the stomach is the airport with frequent departures to the colon. The Mafia relaxes in a steam room located in the armpit. Lawyers hang out in a hemorrhoid. When a zit pops up, it's seemingly the party room for the entire body, complete with a dance floor and strippers. Just simple content like that makes "Osmosis Jones" worth a watch. Even adults will enjoy the live action humor, as well as the film's zest, energy, and irony.

In a time when summer movies are at an all time low, "Osmosis Jones" is here to save they day. It's one of the most clever films of the year.

The premise of the movie itself is pretty creative and how they made the human into a city is very imaginative idea. However even though the animated world is well done with good characters and live action world is lacking. The acting is pretty bad for the live action parts though, the acting is over the top and does not make the audience feel things as we cannot relate to how the characters are reacting to the scenarios, The animation aged well as this was a movie made in 2001 however the CGI did not and just comes off as sloppy and gross to the audience. The story over all is a bit cliche as it is just another buddy cop movie but the premise overall made it more enjoyable then an average movie.

1. This movie is gross. I don't know how you could eat popcorn or something during it.

2. It has some funny moments, but it's no laugh fest. (And it's David Hyde Pierce, not Osmosis Jones, who steals the show as the only really likable character.) It is not funny enough to be a real comedy, but not serious or dramatic enough to pull you in emotionally. It does neither adequately, and suffers for it.

3. The villain in it is kinda cool.

4. It is remarkable that the writers and directors of this film felt it was appropriate to mesh a lot of highly original and creative material (the "metropolis" of a human body, complete down to every nuance of its function and translated into animation) with a main character setup that is now so trite (the fast-talking, annoying inner city cop with a chip on his shoulder who plays by his own rules and doesn't follow procedure, paired unwillingly with the practical straight man or some other stereotypical partner who will get on his nerves.) Chris Rock as the mouthy, wise-cracking cop from the wrong side of the tracks.. Jeez. Enough already.

I had more than enough of him in Lethal Weapon 4. And Chris Tucker, too. (Same name, same voice, same routine, same kinds of movies. Talk about annoying, and I am not even certain that they are separate people.) The Lethal Weapon 4/Rush Hour/Rush Hour 2/Bad Company shtick has been done to death.

5. This movie had its moments, but overall it was a disappointment. Score: 5 out of 10.

Granted, not the funniest movie ever by typical "guffaw standards", but certainly one of the most clever. The intelligence behind the humor is evident (unlike another Farrelly movie, Dumb and Dumber) and is also entertaining for kids.

The more you know about Biology, the more this movie tickles your humorous.

One of the funniest animated films in recent memory proved to be one of the most overlooked. Sure, some of the idiots of the world will state `none of the actions of the characters would ever be correct,' I say, WHO CARES! It's a movie! I really loved some of the inside jokes placed all throughout the film, utilizing current terminology in our world and eschew it in a miniature world of blood and cells. Fun to watch, especially the opening scene with Bill Murray and his daughter. One of those films I'll watch more than once.

I've read a few of the other (positive) comments about Osmosis Jones and I'm convinced they must've been written by WB marketing folks...this movie sucks. The audience I saw it with was largely quiet and seemed as uninvolved in it as I was. About the only thing going for it is the vocal talent (Rock, Fishburne, Pierce, Shatner) but even that ended up being disappointing.

The concept just doesn't work. There's a major disconnect between the live action sequences with Frank (Bill Murray) in the real world (which make up perhaps 1/3 of the movie) and theanimated sequences of what's going on inside his body. For me, this very cartoony anthropomorphic world of his internal organisms (the animation design reminds me of the Simpsons a little bit) just cannot possibly exist at all in the real world...yet we are supposed to believe that Frank's white blood cells look like Smurf/Bart Simpson hybrids and sound like Chris Rock...it was just impossible for me to suspend my disbelief as the film cuts back and forth between these two completely different universes.

That said, I guess the filmmakers do what they can with it, the way they visualize the city of Frank (the inhabitants refer to his brain as Cerebellum Hall, the armpits are where all of the evil bacteria and viruses hang out and veins are shown as busy highways) is somewhat clever but, again, entirely too fantastic to exist in the real world. And then when these wholly disparate worlds collide, and

the animated micro-organisms are literally travelling from one person to another AND THEN BACK AGAIN via phlegm and tears in the real world...well, that's when the impossible becomes

TOTALLY LUDICROUS.

And it doesn't help that all of the live-action actors (notably Murray, Molly Shannon and Chris Elliott) appear to just be collecting paychecks. Murray has achieved a new low here...I enjoyed his recent turns in `Rushmore' and `Charlie's Angels' but this is just plain embarrassing for him. The Farrelly brothers just must've told him to be as disgusting and slovenly as possible, which is fine I guess but that's all he has to do in this and what a waste of his talent. And the result is we just don't care about his character...he's repugnant and an idiot. So what if the Thrax (the virus) causes him to die? The audience feels no sympathy towards Murray and that is the fatal flaw of the film.

And really, I expected more of Rock...there are a couple of scenes where it looks like he was able to improvise and do his thing but for the most part the filmmakers keep him on a pretty short leash and stick to the script, and I really think that an opportunity may have been missed there. Used properly, I think Rock could do great voice-overs for animated films.

Oh yeah, one more thing...why can't a comedic film come out without some dumb film parody in it? You've seen the action in the Matrix parodied a million times already...well add another attempt (very feeble at that) to the list. It's really getting annoying, and pedestrian animated films like this one really have no new insights to add as far as that parody goes. That's what we have Simpsons and South Park for.

One final note...I had this weird feeling when I walked out of the theater...as if the film just didn't work, and I knew the movie reminded me of another, but I couldn't remember what at first. Then it came to me...remember `The Last Action Hero'? That film left me with that same feeling, because Arnold Schwarzenneggar plays the role of a movie character that comes to life in the real world. It was just totally impossible to believe and renders the film - no matter how well it's done and how well everything else is conceived - toothless. And Osmosis Jones falls flat for the same reason. Audiences can suspend their disbelief...but only to a certain point.