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Osmosis Jones (2001)
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Reviews Counted:27
Fresh:15
Rotten:12
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: The animated portion of Osmosis is zippy and fun, but the live-action portion is lethargic.
Theatrical Release:Aug 10, 2001 Wide
Box Office: $12,344,938
Synopsis:
Frank Detorri (BILL MURRAY) is not a healthy guy. He knows it, his young daughter Shane (ELENA FRANKLIN) and her teacher Mrs. Boyd (MOLLY SHANNON) know it, his buddy Bob (CHRIS ELLIOTT) knows it –...
Frank Detorri (BILL MURRAY) is not a healthy guy. He knows it, his young daughter Shane (ELENA FRANKLIN) and her teacher Mrs. Boyd (MOLLY SHANNON) know it, his buddy Bob (CHRIS ELLIOTT) knows it – pretty much anyone who looks at Frank knows he’s no fitness poster boy. Frank eats junk food, abstains from exercise, and treats his body like anything but a temple, particularly since the death of his wife, Shane’s mother.
This unhealthy approach to life makes the inside of Frank’s body a bacterial battleground that festers until the day he invokes his ten-second rule ("If food hits the ground and you pick it up within ten seconds, you can eat it") on a hard-boiled egg he scoops off the ground at the zoo where he works. As he opens his mouth to ingest the dirty egg we follow right along, travelling down into his swampy insides to discover… thanks to the magic of Hollywood’s top animators, colorists and CGI artists…
The City of Frank: a pulsing, organic living metropolis that is home to an entire society of characters – cops, crooks, government officials, deadbeats, villains, and femme fatales. Frank’s got it all, and he’s got it bad.
Fortunately for Frank, one of his internal inhabitants is Osmosis Jones (CHRIS ROCK), a young white blood cell and an officer of the FrankPD. Jones sees an opportunity to make good on his troubled past when he senses the stirrings of a fatal illness spreading through Frank – a villainous virus that goes by the name of Thrax (LAURENCE FISHBURNE). But to bust Thrax, Jones will have to bypass Mayor Phlegmming (WILLIAM SHATNER), a fat-cat brain cell who gives the citizens what they want, not necessarily what’s good for them – like the upcoming Buffalo Wings Festival trip. "A fat Frank is a happy Frank," is the mayor’s motto.
Luckily, the Mayor’s assistant, a sassy little red blood cell named Leah (BRANDY NORWOOD), does want what’s best for Frank, even if her only hope rests with the bumbling Osmosis Jones. And Jones finds another unlikely ally in the visiting Drix (DAVID HYDE PIERCE), a Drixenol cold tablet with twelve hours of time-released germ-fighting power.
Meanwhile, Frank himself does nothing to help from the outside. He’s too busy trying to be there for his daughter as she adjusts to life without Mom, even though he’s clearly not feeling so hot. Unaware of the germ warfare being waged inside him, he feverishly plods along until Thrax and Osmosis clash in a deadly battle that brings them to the brink of the outside world, perched precariously on Shane’s eyelashes. As the virus brings Frank down, the two worlds – inside and out – collide in a final battle for Frank’s life, and for the lives of the citizens of Frank!
Starring: Chris Rock, Bill Murray, Molly Shannon, Chris Elliott
Starring: Chris Rock, Bill Murray, Molly Shannon, Chris Elliott, Laurence Fishburne, David Hyde Pierce, Brandy, Joel Silver, Elena Franklin, Kid Rock, William Shatner, Ron Howard
Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, Piet Kroon
Director: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, Piet Kroon
Screenwriter: Marc Hyman
Producer: Bradley Thomas, Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, Zak Penn, Dennis Edwards
Composer: Randy Edelman
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for Osmosis Jones
It should have been placed in a hazardous waste container, encased in concrete and dumped into the Farrelly brothers' septic tank.
The animated sequences in Osmosis Jones are funny and clever and thoroughly entertaining, with plenty of lively imagination on display in the transposition of a 1970s cop movie to the inner workings of the human body.
It's no funnier than your average grade-school biology lesson and less pedagogically useful than your typical Farrelly brothers comedy.
I really enjoyed Kroon and Sito's movie, but disliked the Farrellys. It's time they try harder - their style has grown sickening. And it's time Kroon and Sito make both halves of a film.
It's lively enough and passably entertaining, even if you may need a barf bag to get through it.
As long as Osmosis Jones sticks to the action-flick innards -- from the gangster dens of the armpits to the deportee docks of the bladder -- it's an inventive series of gags (in both senses).
Osmosis Jones, with its effluvia-festival brand of humor, is often fun, and the rounded, blobby rendering of the characters is likable.
Likely to entertain kids, who seem to like jokes about anatomical plumbing. For adults, there is the exuberance of the animation and the energy of the whole movie, which is just plain clever.
Movies are easier to enjoy when you aren't always covering your eyes.
Though juvenile tastelessness continues to run rampant, Osmosis Jones can at least be safely enjoyed by most juveniles, who will also get a valuable lesson in what a lifetime of junk-food abuse can do.
Adults might remain immune to the process of Osmosis, but younger viewers probably will be receptive to its nervy fun.
Too crude for the kids and not crude enough for connoisseurs of the Something About Mary school of hair jism and balls caught in zippers, Osmosis Jones seems doomed to fall between the cracks.
Has more ambition and imagination than can be comfortably contained in its brief 83 minutes.
Latest News for Osmosis Jones
June 05, 2001:
'I’ve kind of shielded my children from [my movies],' says the codirector of Dumb & Dumber and Me, Myself & Irene. 'Finally, I can show them what I do for a living.' ![]()
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May 22, 2001:
In the months before its production was officially announced, Will Smith was rumored to be the possible voice of Osmosis Jones, but I'm glad that it went instead to Chris Rock. ![]()
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| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
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| 90% 90% | District 9 |
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