Osmosis Jones: Movie & DVD Review (2001)

(Originally published 2001)

In “Osmosis Jones,” the dynamic duo of flatulence, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, want audiences to know they’re still on top of the cinematic dung heap.

This time out, in a supreme effort to up the ante for scatological humor, the poster boys for Beano take audiences inside the body--Bill Murray’s body, to be exact--a vile place where wet-sounding rips, braps, pffffftttsss and honks are, not surprisingly, in ample supply.

The film, from a script by Marc Hyman, is a bawdy mix of live action and animation for the PG crowd. Because of its family-friendly rating, it doesn’t have the absurdly raunchy edge of other Farrelly films, especially “There’s Something About Mary” and “Me, Myself & Irene.” But as family fare goes, some parents of young children might find themselves cringing at the film’s ongoing infatuation with Bill Murray’s business end.

The film follows Frank (Murray), a hygienically challenged zookeeper who abides by a peculiar rule: Any food that hasn’t been on the ground for longer than 10 seconds is good enough to eat, even if that food is a hard-boiled egg previously sucked on by a chimpanzee before being spit out onto the bottom of the chimp’s filthy cage.

Yes, this is that sort of movie.

Clinging to the egg are all sorts of nasty germs, but none worse than the virus Thrax (voice of Laurence Fishburne), an evil, sneering menace that “makes Ebola look like dandruff,” and which intends to wreak havoc on Frank’s gastrointestinal track.

In a film filled with its share of small moments, the big question is this: Will the white blood cell, Osmosis Jones (Chris Rock), and the stuffy 12-hour cold capsule, Drix (David Hyde Pierce), be able to rid Thrax from of Frank’s body? Not without loads of vomit, exploding zits, wayward boogers and other unmentionables.

As anyone who remembers Joe Dante’s “Innerspace,” Richard Fleischer’s “Fantastic Voyage” or even Woody Allen’s “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)” can attest, traveling inside the human body is hardly new, so what do the Farrellys offer?

Unfortunately, not much. In spite of a handful of clever moments, all of which revolve around Piet Kroon and Tom Sito’s excellent animation, a good deal of “Osmosis Jones” is curiously flat, particularly the live-action scenes, which are in such sharp contrast to the inventive animation, the film would have been lifted considerably if the Farrellys had just picked their script as carefully as they ask Murray to pick his nose.

Grade: C-