Organic chemistry

Osmosis Jones is classified as one of those rare animated films that gain little acceptance due to the fact that it’s not the candy coated general commercial material that Disney promotes with every animated feature they produce.Warner Bros first created simple story of the Iron Giant that lacked the interest for the main stream audience but reached a high point with everyone that saw past what most animated films portrayed and concentrate on artist quality rather than the money that was generated. Osmosis Jones is indeed like that and showcases a vibrant rich world full of inventive visual ideas of the human body with a brilliant script with comedy provided that last the entire movie.

STORY

Osmosis Jones is made of mostly 2D animation with some live-action elements that tells the world of Frank. The movie starts out in the live-action world that introduces to a zookeeper named Frank, who is one of those disgusting unkempt individuals that doesn’t take care of himself. Frank is single parent that surprisingly is raising a daughter who is concerned about his health. Frank happens to eat lunch around the monkey cages and puts the item of his choice in his mouth after it dropped on the ground, three second rule couldn’t even apply here.

The contaminated egg enters his body and then we are introduced to the beautiful 2D animated world of Frank and all of it’s intricate style and structure that seems to be headed for unprepared danger with a life-threatening virus. The film goes between showing the physical effects of Frank and venturing into the animated world to show what’s happening to his system.

CHARACTERS

The story is centered around the white blood cell himself Osmosis Jones (Chris Rock) who is a police officer in charge of protecting Frank from Bacteria in some dirty mouth work detail before it causes some unwanted effects. Rock is a perfect choice to voice Jones because he provides the loud and abrasive that’s ideal to show Jones’s cocky tone.

He may get carried away in certain scenes but it fits well for most of the movie. Jones has a habit of messing things up and Frank happens to get sick and a cold tablet named Drix (David Hyde Pierce) comes to the aid. Pierce provides that perfect constructive intellectual dry voice that you would figure a cold tablet would sound like.

Drix and Jones team up in unlikely combination when Jones may have discovered there’s more to harm Frank than a simple germ and must prove the evidence. Thrax(Laurence Fishburne) is introduced as the life-threatening virus that on a quest to kill Frank off in a record setting pace and it’s up to Jones and Drix to stop him. Fishburne is another perfect choice to fill the role of the evil virus and provides that vindictive jive style that creates a even more menacing approach to the consuming virus.

The great thing in bringing in this great cast of voice talent is the actual brilliant humorous script to go along with it. Most of the humor dialogue I suppose would be the tongue and cheek type of stuff but it works so well in this new kind of visual interpretation. Now there are the bodily humor jabs contained in the film but we are dealing with the human body and the internal workings of Frank, so it‘s going to be expected. The surprising thing is that despite the ample opportunity to exploit this type of humor with the subject matter, Osmosis Jones doesn’t go into a hardcore mode and contains the jokes in a nice package and moves on to the next without highlighting them.

GRAPHICS

Now you can almost see this concept and development for this film coming from the artists and animators rather than the studio heads over at Warner Bros. There is about 75% of animation contain in this production and it’s a shame that the whole entire thing isn’t animated because of all visually stunning creations developed to make Frank come alive on the inside are amazing and creates it’s own unique visual style that’s different than most features. The whole world of Frank is setup in the massive city environment with sheer volumes of complex structures and connections with each part completely different from the rest.

Each part of Frank is different from the overhead view of the Mayor’s office located in the brain to the areas around the mouth and nose. The visual elements work well and everything created makes sense in the unique sort of way that is very accurate and believable. The only way to understand this experience is to watch all of this brilliant creativity come to life on the screen as the animation unfolds. The animation of all the characters and environments move very naturally giving a very realistic portrayal of the liquid and organic structures that would be found in the internal workings of a human body.

PROBLEMS

The major issue that present is that the live-action sequences are very weak and dull and hurt the overall movie. Bill Murray doesn’t even have to try to look like a disgusting slob, he just does effortlessly without requiring him to do much of anything else. The live action scenes did create good transition from the animations scenes but lacked any direction or substance that only showed Murray looking pathetic.

The whole film feels like two separate entities that are completely different from each other your surprised there combined in the same feature. It’s a shame that the Farrelly brothers were given the opportunity to direct this because what you see is completely pointless and embarrassing to say the least.

DVD FEATURES

Osmosis Jones is presented in the ideal 2:35 Widescreen that retains the same original format from the theater. The quality of the color are shown very crisp and clear that provides a great transition from the big screen. The special features are on the weaker side but is packed with some interested information. The DVD features a couple of featurettes describing the movie and the voice talent as well as some deleted scenes and a couple of trailers.

CONCLUSION

Despite the assumption that great box-office earnings equal successful movies, Osmosis Jones goes separate and disproves this formula by creating it’s own unique witty animated world that should have deserved more attention buy didn‘t. The thing that’s regretful is that Warner Bros couldn’t have earned as much money that equaled the amount of talent that was put into developing this visual world. Osmosis Jones enters you into it’s own creative world with a brilliant screenplay that provides most of the laughs with an overall theme that should not be missed on DVD