Osmosis Jones
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 "Medical books aren't written about losers."
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Osmosis Jones is a 2001 American live-action/animated action comedy adventure film with animated scenes directed by Tom Sito and Piet Kroon with live-action scenes directed by the Farrelly Brothers.
Plot
Mixing live-action and animation, the film follows the misadventures of a zoo worker with an unknown malady he contracted after eating an egg contaminated with simian saliva. The responsibility of eradicating this lethal virus falls to a white blood cell cop and a fussy cold-cure pill.
Why It's One Cell Of A Movie
- This, along with another Warner Bros. production The Iron Giant, is a beautifully animated feature film with refreshing smooth and visually stunning cel-animation with expressive movements and fast-paced action sequences.
- The way the inside of the body is essentially a city; the white blood cells are the police, fireman, etc., the lymph nodes are the police stations, veins are highways, the stomach is a bus station/airport type place, and the germs and bacteria were, of course, the criminals, and so on.
- A Star-studded voice cast provided by Chris Rock, Brandy Norwood, Laurence Fishburne, David Hyde Pierce, and William Shatner.
- Thrax, voiced by Laurence Fishburne, is one of the slickest animated antagonists in a kids' film; he is cunning, witty, ruthless to the point of committing on-screen acts of murder, managing to surpass the heroes multiple times, and is well-designed, fantastically voiced, and beautifully animated.
- The film expertly uniquely blends live-action and animation, especially for the final act.
- Marc Hyman wrote a fun, imaginative, and adventurous script for the movie.
- Bobby and Peter Farrelly did a fine job directing the film, making you suspend reality and imagine your body working like it is depicted in the film.
- The film uses and mentions a lot of real-world biological/hygienic terms as characters, backgrounds, and gags, resulting in the film being somewhat educational and thus being used in school.
- Decent cinematography, for the most part.
- The soundtrack is decent.
- The plot is rather good and has a fast pace, not just way too much, just normal.
- The animated scenes are well done.
- Osmosis "Ozzy" Jones and Drixenol "Drix" Koldreliff are likable main characters.
Bad Qualities
- Despite a highly imaginative concept and premise, the film resorts to a lot of clichés, a good majority being buddy cop movie clichés.
- Like many other Farrelly Brothers' movies, it features a lot of gross-out humor and innuendos that exceed far beyond its PG rating. Not to mention that it was a victim of studio interference after the film was initially rated PG-13.
- Bill Murray's performance as Frank DeTorre was widely criticized, being portrayed as an unlikable fat slob of a father and at times, pretty lethargic. The scene where he tells Shane how her mother died while eating and giving an unemotive delivery is the highlight of this.
- Although, his unlikable and slobbish personality is mostly due to Mayor Phlegmming constantly overriding Frank's body for his gain.
- Speaking of Frank, the movie occasionally has some pretty mean-spirited writing. Especially with how Mrs. Boyd and her children were humiliated after Frank puked on her when Ozzy hit the emergency puke button.
- The music doesn't match with some scenes.
- The profanity was badly overdubbed with "hell" replaced by "heck", making it sound off.
- Some scenes were deleted that resulted in plot holes such as where Ozzy and Drix ride on a heartburn and nearly get caught by Frank picking his nose.
- Thrax can be kinda scary for a kids' film. Not to mention his death can be kinda dark.
- While blended nicely, the live-action scenes detract from the film. The film would have been better received if most of the live-action scenes were removed.
Reception
Originally, Osmosis Jones was met with mixed reviews from critics, who praised the animated scenes, the voice cast (particularly Rock's, Pierce's, and Fishburne's), and the plot, but criticized the live-action portions, and the overuse of gross-out humor. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 55% based on 110 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10 on IMDb. The site's critical consensus reads, "The animated portion of Osmosis is zippy and fun, but the live-action portion is lethargic.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
A year later, it received a positive reception from audiences and has a cult following. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale.
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Comments
- Warner Bros. Animation
- Warner Bros. films
- 2000s films
- Action films
- Adventure films
- Buddy films
- Crime films
- Comedy films
- Animated films
- Live-action films
- Hybrid films
- Box office bombs
- Box office bombs that received positive feedback
- Good films
- Films with good morals
- PG-rated films
- Gross-out films
- Good media
- Cult films