The film premiered on August 7, 2001 and was released theatrically three days later. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the world building, animation, story and voice performances, but criticized the inconsistent tone of the live-action portions and overuse of gross-out humor. The film was also a commercial failure, grossing $14 million worldwide against a $70 million budget. Despite the poor financial response, the film became a success on home video and was followed by the animated television series Ozzy & Drix, which aired on Kids' WB for two seasons and twenty-six episodes from 2002 to 2004.
Plot
Frank DeTorre is an unkempt zookeeper who copes with the death of his wife Maggie by overeating unhealthy foods and forgoing basic hygiene, much to the concern of his daughter Shane. Inside his body, white blood cellOsmosis "Ozzy" Jones is an overzealous officer of the "Frank Police Department," the body's center for responses against bodily threats, and his methods of catching germs often cause trouble and have given him a negative reputation.
Mayor Phlemming, seeking re-election, doubles down on his junk food policies and ignores warnings about Frank's health in order to go to a Buffalo wing festival. After Frank eats a contaminated boiled egg, his throat becomes inflamed and Phlegmming instructs him to take a cold pill, bringing Special Agent Drixenol "Drix" Drixobenzometaphedramine into the body to investigate the cause of the inflammation. Drix disinfects the throat, inadvertently covering up evidence of the true cause of the inflammation - Thrax, a virus known as "The Red Death".
Thrax murders the leader of a gang of sweat germs and assumes control. Ozzy and Drix encounter Thrax in the nose, who escapes by inciting a runny nose. Seeing Ozzy's attempts to warn Phlegmming rebuffed, Drix learns from him that he once saw an undetected foreign invader in Frank's stomach and responded by making Frank vomit on Shane's teacher, Mrs. Boyd. This incident led to Frank's dismissal from his previous job, Mrs. Boyd filing a restraining order against him, while Ozzy was suspended for unnecessary force and then demoted to patrol duties in Frank's mouth. Despite this, Drix agrees Ozzy did the right thing, as his actions prevented further damage to Frank.
While Frank visits Mrs. Boyd at Shane's school to ask her to lift the restraining order so he can accompany Shane on the school hike, one of Ozzy's informants - a flu vaccine named Chill - directs him and Drix to Thrax's hideout. Ozzy and Drix visit a nightclub within a large zit on Frank's forehead, where Ozzy goes undercover and learns that Thrax intends to masquerade as a common cold and use his knowledge on human DNA to kill Frank in a record forty-eight hours. Ozzy is subsequently discovered and Drix comes to his aid, causing a brawl which culminates in the zit being popped; its pus inadvertently lands on Mrs. Boyd's lip and she angrily rejects Frank's request. In response, Phlegmming closes the investigation, and despite their warnings, Ozzy is dismissed from the police force and Drix is ordered to leave Frank’s body.
Thrax survives the zit's explosion and infiltrates the hypothalamus, where he steals a crucial nucleotide, disabling Frank's body's ability to regulate temperature and he starts to develop a fever. Realizing Thrax survived, Ozzy catches up to Drix and the two head to the brain where Thrax uses Phlegmming's secretary, Leah Estrogen, as a human shield and escapes. Frank's temperature reaches 108°F (42°C) and he is hospitalized as his body begins performing a cytokine storm to rid itself of Thrax's infection.
Ozzy and Drix rescue Leah and pursue Thrax, who escapes with the nucleotide by inducing Frank to sneeze him out of the mouth using pollen; meanwhile, Shane arrives at the hospital after hearing her father has gone into cardiac arrest. Drix shoots Ozzy after Thrax and they land on one of Shane's false eyelashes, which Thrax becomes stuck on and is killed when the lash falls into a beaker of rubbing alcohol. Ozzy rides one of Shane's tears back into Frank's mouth with the nucleotide, reviving Frank just in time.
Ozzy is welcomed back into the police force, forming a partnership with Drix and beginning a relationship with Leah. Frank commits himself to living a healthier lifestyle and he and Shane go on a hike together. Forced out of office, a now-disgraced Phlegmming becomes a janitor in the bowels and is ejected from Frank's body after ignoring a warning not to trigger flatulence.
Osmosis Jones went through development hell during production. The animated sequences, directed by Tom Sito and Piet Kroon,[3] went into production as planned even being completed ahead of schedule, but acquiring both a director and a star actor for the live-action sequences took a considerable amount of time, until Bill Murray was cast as the main character of Frank, and Peter and Bobby Farrelly stepped in to direct the live-action sequences. As part of their contract, the Farrelly brothers are credited as the primary directors of the film, although they did no supervision of the animated portions of the film. Will Smith was interested in the part of Ozzy, but in the end, his schedule would not permit it.[4]
Principal photography on the live-action scenes took place from April 2 to June 19, 2000, in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Osmosis Jones was originally rated PG-13 by the MPAA for "crude language" and "bodily humor" in 2000. However, Warner Bros. edited the film to make it family-friendly; and in 2001 when it was released, the film was re-rated PG for "bodily humor".[5]
Osmosis Jones had its world premiere screening on August 7, 2001, at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre before being widely released on August 10, 2001, in 2,305 theaters worldwide. Upon its original release, the film performed poorly, and was the penultimate project produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation (preceded by The Iron Giant and followed by Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which both also failed at the box office upon their original releases). The film opened at #7 in its first opening weekend at the U.S. box office, accumulating $5,271,248 on its opening week. The film soon grossed $13,596,911.[1] The film was a box office bomb, unable to recover its $70 million production budget.[6]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, Osmosis Jones has an approval rating of 55% based on 112 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The animated portion of Osmosis is zippy and fun, but the live-action portion is lethargic."[7] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[8] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[9]
The film's animated sections were praised for their plot and fast pace, in contrast with the criticized live-action segments. Robert Koehler of Variety admired how the animated and live-action segments intermingled: "most extensive interplay of live-action and animation since Who Framed Roger Rabbit".[10]Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice wrote its "genre satire" was "almost Swiftian": "disastrous physiopathological stats are fodder for glib newscasts." He thought the denouement surrendered "to the big sleep (in an amazing Ordet kind of way)", concluding "not since David Cronenberg’sRabid has a movie used biological vulnerability to such resonant and anxious profit."[11]NYT wrote "the film, with its effluvia-festival brand of humor, is often fun, and the rounded, blobby rendering of the characters is likable. But the picture tries too hard to be offensive to all ages. I suspect that even the littlest viewers will be too old for that spit."[12]Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 and wrote: "Likely to entertain kids, who seem to like jokes about anatomical plumbing. For adults, there is the exuberance of the animation and the energy of the whole movie, which is just plain clever."[13]
The use of gross-out humor in the film's live-action sequences, as seen in most films directed by the Farrelly brothers, was widely criticized. As such, Lisa Alspector of the Chicago Reader described the film as a "cathartically disgusting adventure movie".[14] Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide praised the film's animation and its glimpse of intelligence although did criticize the humor as being "so distasteful".[15] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly felt that the film had a diverse premise as it "oscillates between streaky black comedy and sanitary instruction"; however the scatological themes were again pointed out.[16] Jonathan Foreman of New York Post claimed Osmosis Jones to have generic plotting, saying that "It's no funnier than your average grade-school biology lesson and less pedagogically useful than your typical Farrelly brothers comedy."[17] Michael Sragow of Baltimore Sun praised David Hyde Pierce's performance as Drix, claiming him to be "hilarious" and "a take-charge dose of medicine".[18]
The film also received criticism for its use of the Kid Rock song "Cool Daddy, Cool", the full version of which contains lyrics promoting statutory rape.[19]
A soundtrack containing hip hop and R&B music was released on August 7, 2001, by Atlantic Records. The soundtrack failed to chart on the Billboard 200, but Trick Daddy's single "Take It to da House" managed to make it to number 88 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Ozzy & Drix, an animated series that serves as a stand-alone continuation of the film, starring Phil LaMarr and Jeff Bennett as the titular characters, aired on Kids' WB for two seasons and 26 episodes from September 14, 2002 to July 5, 2004.
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