it’s a shame the execution of this concept falls very short of its premise .
the movie is lacking and most unsatisfying .
osmosis jones is crude , gross , disgusting , and was directed by the farrelly brothers – the twisted siblings behind there’s something about mary , me , myself and irene and a couple of other movies in which the humor is mostly targeted below the belt .
not that there’s anything wrong with scatology .
i bet even cavemen appreciated bathroom humor – such as it was .
it’s merely that with osmosis jones , the farrellys humor is too juvenile , too predictable .
you can almost foresee the puns just by viewing the part of the inner anatomy a sequence is drawn .
osmosis jones looks like one of those old health class movies gone psycho .
the trouble is , the animation may please the very young , but the jokes may be over their heads , while the teen-age audience may find it too tame for their tastes .
adults ? well , let’s just say most will find it unappetizing .
osmosis jones plays like a 100-minute infomercial for the eat healthy foods lobby .
the live action sequences revolve around frank ( bill murray ) , who seems to be the grungiest human being in the universe .
he continually looks as if he needs a shave and a shower .
frank , much to the consternation of his daughter , is a fast-food addict , eating anything – and everything – that can kill you .
he works at a zoo where the animals look cleaner – and presumably smell better – than he does .
frank’s body is invaded by thrax , a lethal virus , after frank eats a hard-boiled egg that had fallen to the ground .
it’s not gross enough that frank picks the egg up from the dirt and plops it into his mouth .
nope , the farrellys pile it on by first having frank wrestle a chimp for the egg , wresting it from the primate’s mouth .
like i said , the gross meter tips the scales on this one .
after ingesting the egg , the movie begins its animated sequences .
here , osmosis jones ( voiced by chris rock ) , a renegade white blood cell is teamed with drix ( voiced by frasier’s david hyde pierce ) , a 12-hour , painkiller cold capsule to battle thrax ( smoothly voiced by laurence fishburne ) .
basically , what we have is a cliched cop-buddy movie , rife with all the clich ? s of that genre .
and this is why osmosis jones doesn’t click .
it merely falls back on tired , familiar conventions instead of creating new and exciting situations .
the jokes and puns are lame : osmosis searches out a snitch , a former flu virus .
after pumping him for information , drix tells osmosis , ” funny , he doesn’t look fluish . ”
and the jokes don’t rise above that level .
the live action scenes are no better .
frank is such a slob , so unappealing that it is difficult to fathom how he ever married or even sired a child .
he’s almost a bigger cartoon than the animated characters .
osmosis jones is a movie that may be too violent for young children as thrax burns and dissolves blood cells right and left .
the animation is rather two-dimensional and flat .
it lacks scope and depth .
it is an unappealing movie that will leave you scratching your head , and maybe leaning toward a shower after you walk out of the theater .