Saving Frank
Who would have guessed it? Living inside inveterate
white guy Frank (Bill Murray) is a company of black
folks. That's the conceit of Osmosis Jones, in which
you get to see what goes on deep within what may be
the worst specimen of a human body ever conceived.
Osmosis Jones isn't really one movie, but rather two
movies smooshed together, each with a separate plot
and set of characters. One of these movies -- the
animated one that takes place inside Frank -- is okay.
The other one, involving live actors and lots of
gross-out bodily function humor -- is less pleasant.
Of course, pleasantness has never been a particular
goal for the Farrelly brothers, who are the directors
if the live action movie. And Murray does his best to
make Frank as disgusting as possible, aided by
repeated close-ups of his sweaty pores, hair
follicles, nose-snot, gooey eyes, and, in the piece de
resistance, a gargantuan zit on his forehead that
throbs and oozes until it explodes, all over Mrs. Boyd
(Molly Shannon), who is rightfully horrified. And why
is Frank close enough to Mrs. Boyd so that his zit
might explode all over her? On one level, it hardly
matters, and on another, it 's the crux of Frank's
dilemma, as he is trying to do the right thing by his
inhumanly patient and supportive daughter Shane (Elena
Franklin), who happens to be Mrs. Boyd's student --
and convince Mrs. Boyd to allow his participation in a
class outing. Obviously, this will never happen. But
this is only the tip of the iceberg: the real problem
is Frank's repulsiveness and bad health -- resulting
from his affection for fried chicken and potato chips
-- increasingly stressful for Shane, especially
because her mother recently died.
His bad health also alarms the population of cartoon
characters who make up The City of Frank, location for
the second movie. This one, directed by Piet Kroon
(The Iron Giant) and Tom Sito (Antz), features
microscopic body elements -- cells, germs, viruses,
etc. -- as cartoon characters. Inside Frank is a
metropolis, complete with transportation services,
entertainment, and a police force. And here's where
the titular Osmosis (voice of Chris Rock) comes in.
Osmosis is a young and feisty white blood cell officer
in the FrankPD, where his mission in life is to ensure
the smooth-as-possible functioning of Frank. To
accomplish this, he has to survive the spoof of
buddy-cop movies that comprises his plot, where he
runs into the usual cop-movie types: the blustery
Mayor of Frank, a brain cell named Phlemming (William
Shatner) who lives in Cerebellum Hall; the Mayor's
assistant, an independent woman-ish red blood cell
named Leah (Brandy Norwood); plus assorted minor
characters, including a crotchety captain and various
street lowlifes.
The specific plot kicks into gear when Frank ingests a
pernicious, potentially lethal virus, Thrax (Laurence
Fishburne). Riding in on a hardboiled egg that Frank
has dropped on the ground, Thrax arrives in the City
ready to wreak havoc. He glows red, practices his
sinister laugh, and takes over the local gang by
rubbing out the godfather in a sauna (it's a
mini-gangster-movie or Sopranos spoof that, along
with a Matrix fight scene freeze and a few other
"set piece" scenes, highlights Osmosis Jones's
everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to the spoof
biz: after a while, it just feels like a pile-up).
When Frank starts feeling the effects of this building
disaster, he takes a cold pill, an act that introduces
the crucial last element to the Osmosis plot -- the
buddy. Perhaps because he only has 12 hours to get his
job done, Drix (David Hyde Pierce) is a stickler for
rules and protocol; likes to go by the book, where
Osmosis tends to operate on instinct. Bottom line:
these two opposites must learn to get along, in order
to vanquish Thrax and save the day, or more precisely,
save Frank.
All this action inside Frank is, of course, determined
by what he does to himself, but what develops inside
him -- a sneeze, a desire (usually engineered by the
brain cells) -- also affects his behavior, and so the
film tends to lurch between realms. Whereas the
outside "storyline" is all about bodily functions,
inside, the jokes are quicker, combining colorful
kid-pleasing animation and more or less adolescent
verbal gags within an obvious framework, the cop-movie
spoof. The body "architecture" is probably the
snazziest idea here: the City is a morass of city
streets, an airport (through which cells leave and
enter the body); the bladder (a yellow harbor that's
drained regularly); and The Zit, a club with a waiting
line and a bouncer outside, pulsing with music and
just waiting to explode (see above description of Mrs.
Boyd scene).
A lot goes on in Osmosis Jones, but the split
between the two films becomes tedious after a couple
of cuts between the two realms: Frank inhales pollen
spores and the City defense system triggers a sneeze;
Frank drinks beer with his buddy and fellow zoo
employee/camel-dug shoveler, Bob (Chris Elliot), and
the body prepares for the whoosh of fluid, etc. The
roughness of these cuts suggests that the animated
movie might have fared better on its own: at least it
has a well-laid out (and well-known) trajectory. The
outside Frank world is not a movie so much as a series
of Farrelly brothers zingers mixed in with some
sentimental claptrap about the precocious,
adventurous, and brave little girl and her ignorant
dad.
It is interesting that this dad has this very "urban"
-- streetwise, slangy, clued in -- population living
inside him, and something might be made of the
contrasts between Osmosis's healthy, if somewhat
egotistical, blackness and Frank's miserable,
self-hating whiteness. But after you notice that
Osmosis Jones has noticed the pop-cultural
festishization of "blackness," what can you say? The
movie doesn't pick up on its own insight. It keeps
rolling around in that bodily function muck. Perhaps,
eventually, the Farrellys will find in themselves the
will to move on.
