Hey folks, Harry here... I'll check this out soon, but folks I must recommend you seeing THE OTHERS first. It's a movie that we simply do not see enough of. Now here's Capone....
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here to say that if the new Farrelly brothers animated splendor OSMOSIS JONES became a Saturday morning cartoon, I’d watch it. And it could so easily be adapted, it’s scary. Imagine each week Bill Murray (more than likely someone a little cheaper; say a Dabney Coleman) having a new bodily malfunction, and having Jones and his crew of white blood cells come in and save the day. If such a Saturday morning cartoon had the originality and veracity of this film version, hell yeah I’d watch it.
I laughed and was sickened by the chance-taking gall that is OSMOSIS JONES, the story of Frank (Murray) and his body of disrepair. If it’s unhealthy, Frank shoves it in his mouth. One day Frank and his daughter were visiting the monkey cage at the zoo where Frank works. A monkey grabs a hard-boiled egg out of Franks hand and puts it in its mouth. Frank wrestles the egg from the monkey’s jaw and it falls into the well-treaded dirt below. In an act of pure defiance, Frank eats the egg complete with clippings, dirt, and who knows what else still attached. Yum!
Little does Frank know but an entire animated civilization (called “Frank”) living in his body, headed by a mayor, policed by white blood cells, with a system of highways trafficked by red blood “cars.” When Mayor Phlegmming (William Shatner) receives complaints that fat cells are overpopulating a certain area of the body, he calls for the construction of a new chin. When citizens worry about hair becoming “unemployed” on the Frank’s head, he promises more jobs on the back. You get the idea, and what a great idea it is. Frank’s inner city is a fully realized master stroke. I wanted to see how every part of him was cartoonishly realized. Enter white blood cell Osmosis Jones (voiced by Chris Rock). He is the stereotypical maverick cop in the form of a white blood cell, and he opens the film by accidentally causing the collapse of a part of Franks leg (giving him one hell of a cramp). As a result of this action, Jones is giving the seemingly pitiful task of escorting a cold tablet named Drix (the wonderful David Hyde Pierce, somewhat repeating his characterization from A BUG’S LIFE) through Frank’s system to erase any symptoms. When Frank popped the Drix tablet, he thought he had a cold. In fact, a nasty and deadly virus entered his system when he ate the filthy egg. The virus, called Thrax (Laurence Fishburne), has made it his personal goal to kill Frank within 48 hours.
Osmosis and Drix team up to alert the rest of the body to this threat, but because it’s Jones nobody believes them at first. You can probably guess how things turn out, but what fun it was getting there. Some great visuals include Frank’s nasal passages in the form of a damn...which bursts under the pressure of a ton of snot. Frank also develops a gigantic zit right between his eyes, which actually throbs before it bursts. Does the fun never stop? You can probably gather from these descriptions that OSMOSIS JONES is often gross, and for some of you that probably won’t cut it. But this is classic Farrelly territory. The live-action stuff with Murray and his daughter is good and cute, but when the animation is on screen, you completely forget about humans. I saw this film with an audience of mostly children, and they were ultra-attentive. Chris Rock gets a chance to strut his vocal skills, and Fishburne finally gets to unleash his dark side as the beautifully drawn Thrax. What the animation lacks in fine details, it makes up for in pure enthusiasm. OSMOSIS JONES is a riotous, original, and disgusting bit of coolness.
Capone (Send Me Males Here! Um, I mean Mail, damn that Knowles!)
or check out my collected review at (just click on Steve@theMovies).
