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Osmosis Jones

Osmosis Jones

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Clever idea features every bodily function gag imaginable
Review: A reasonably entertaining blend of live action and animation with the live action scenes directed by the Farrelly brothers.
Bill Murray is a lazy zookeeper who is unable to take proper care of himself. Inside his body live animated blood cells. One, a cop named Osmosis Jones (voiced by Chris Rock) decides to try and save Murray by challenging the orders of his superior (voiced by William Shatner) and give Murray the chance to turn his life around. The movie also features the voice talents of Brandy, Larry Fishburne, Ron Howard and David Hyde-Pierce. Kid Rock also makes an appearance in animated form as Kidney Rock.
OSMOSIS JONES is a movie all ages ought to enjoy, even if the animation is a bit iffy at times, but in general it's a clever, humorous piece of entertainment with Rock and Hyde-Pierce (as Jones's partner) providing excellent voice performances. As with SHREK, the character animation vaguely resembles the actors. Larry Fishburne is especially effective and menacing as the bad guy. I would also advise viewers not to eat during the movie as there is a rather low rent mucus gag and an amusing zit gag. Basically every bodily function joke you can think of is present in OSMOSIS JONES.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: OK.
Review: Osmosis Jones is a great movie for kids,I wouldn't tell older people to watch this movie.It's kind of weird seeing Chris Rock in a movie without him cursing,well there is no bad humor but there are some very sick parts considering it takes place in a body and it's about a white blood sell and a cold pill tring to save a body from a bad germ.It get's stupid and slow at some parts but it's a good movie all together.Recap!Good for kids bad for adults,slow but good.Kids,get it.Adults,don't bother.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Bad
Review: The live action-animation interaction was flwed; the Farrely Brothers can do better than "gross-out PG" comedy. They could make Dumb and Dumber, Something about Mary, and Kingpin style films. Their free fall continues. Say It isn't so! (Get it?)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A one-of-a kind picture
Review: Osmosis Jones is a movie that is better than it looks. The story is halarious. The music great. And i loved how the movie was animation and real life. The only thing I didn't like was how the menu was setup, very confusing. But a funny movie with jokes the whole family can enjoy!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Eh...
Review: Well, personally, I thought it was pretty gross but maybe other people liked it. It wasn't funny. There were some kinda sad attempts at jokes that didn't work out, and all in all it was pretty much a gross walk-out movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: More Animation, Less Live Action
Review: "Osmosis Jones" is a half-animated/half-live-action movie about Osmosis Jones, a white blood cell living inside Frank. Osmosis is voiced by Chris Rock and Frank is a part of the live action sequences and is played by Bill Murray. Frank is a disgusting individual who has contracted a nasty virus named Thrax (voiced by Laurence Fishburne) after eating a hard-boiled egg that fell on the floor of a monkey cage at the zoo where he works.

The animated sequences of "Osmosis Jones" are straight out of Hollywood's rogue cop scenario. Osmosis has a reputation for rash behavior and has been shunted to some of the less desirable beats. After Frank starts feeling ill, his daughter wants to take him to the hospital but the mayor of Frank (voiced by William Shatner) overrides Frank's controls and has him take a cold pill. The cold pill, Drix (voiced by David Hyde Pierce), teams up with Osmosis to cure Frank. Drix is the good cop to Osmosis's bad cop.

"Osmosis Jones" could have been a better movie if they focused less on what was going on between Frank and his daughter. The live action scenes had the wearying feeling of filler material and were not funny. While the animated scenes were not "Airplane!" funny, they were certainly more amusing than the live action scenes and could have been better if given more screen time. Perhaps the film makers couldn't come up with more animated material; but, it would have been nice to see more of it.

The conceptualization of Frank's body as an urban environment with all its attendant charateristics was very smart. Frank, not being interested in his health very much, is portrayed as a decaying urban jungle headed by a corrupt city hall with apathetic, lazy voters and rampant crime. The Mayor attempts all manner of typical political schlock to win re-election because he thinks the voters are mindless saps who only want more potato chips and lots of naps.

If anything this movie will certainly make you think a bit about how you treat your own body. When you think about what type of condition the City of You might be in, it would probably not bode well if you considered it very close to the condition of the City of Frank.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This movie is really disgusting.
Review: Don't know what's worse. A movie where jokes are ment to sicken you, or a Hollywood movie studio that thought people wanted or cared to see this movie in the first place.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "The dude was sick before I got here"
Review: Frank (Bill Muary) is a slob, and his eatting habits are just gross. Frank eats a dirty egg from the zoo. Inside the egg, a deadly virus named Thrax (Laurence Fishburne) who wished to make medical history by killing Frank. Enter Osomois Jones (Chris Rock) and Drips...err...Drix (David Hyde Pierce). Jones is a white blood cell and Drix is over-the-counter cold pill. Drix and Osomois Jones work together to stop Thrax.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It's unimpressiveness is impressive...
Review: ...this movie was a huge mistake. 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 the animated 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. They should leave that to more insightful programs such as Simpsons and South Park.

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.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Leukocytes finally get (some of) the credit they deserve!
Review: I have a B.S. in germs (microbiology) and the first time we went over the body's response to offending viruses and ESPECIALLY the role of white blood cells, I thought, "Wow -- what a story! Someone oughta write a book.." Well, the Farelly brothers brought these unsung heroes [a bit inaccurately] to film and did a really good job. Some of the characterizations of, say, the digestive cleanup after eating the egg, and the "scientists" in the hypothalamus had me thinking, "Yeah, that's how I pictured it too..." My kids (5 - 7 yrs) and I have watched it several times over (although I can't handle it around any meal time or first thing in the morning) and I STILL keep seeing details I missed during previous runs. This is a VERY CLEVER movie (and how often do we get to say that?), very rich depth of detail and very funny, with a strong message about the harm done to your body and your loved ones when you mismanage your health.
If I were a biology teacher, I'd show this to the class and use it for a one question final -- "Give 3 examples where the movie does or does not accurately reflect reality."


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