Osmosis Jones

Frank DeTorre is an unkempt and slovenly zookeeper at the Sucat Memorial Zoo in Rhode Island. Depressed by the loss of his wife years earlier, he copes by overeating and refusing to exercise, to the annoyance of his young daughter Shane. Inside his body, or the "City of Frank" as known by its anthropromorphized inhabitants, white blood cell Osmosis "Ozzy" Jones is an over-zealous officer of the Frank Police Department, the city's center for immune responses against bodily threats, who was demoted to patrol duty in the mouth after he induced Frank to vomit against orders. This incident got Frank fired from his previous job at a pea soup factory, and banned from visiting Shane's school due to a restraining order filed by her P.E. and science teacher, Mrs. Boyd.

Two years later, facing a serious challenge to his reelection prospects, Mayor Phlegmming doubles down on his junk food policies, ignoring their effect on Frank's health. This causes Frank to eat a boiled egg covered in filth, allowing Thrax, a deadly virus known as El Muerto Rojo ("The Red Death"), to enter the throat. Unwilling to admit responsibility, Phlegmming instructs Frank to take a cold pill through brain signals. The pill, Drixenol "Drix" Koldreliff, proceeds to disinfect the throat, covering up any evidence of Thrax's arrival. To his displeasure, Ozzy is subsequently assigned to assist Drix in his investigation. Meanwhile, Thrax assumes leadership of a gang of sweat germs and launches an attack on the mucus dam in Frank's nose, nearly killing Drix before Ozzy rescues him.

The two pay a visit to one of Ozzy's informants (a cell from a flu vaccine), who directs them to Thrax's hideout in a germ-ridden nightclub. Ozzy goes undercover and infiltrates Thrax's gang, where he learns that Thrax is a relatively new virus seeking his own chapter in the medical history books. He intends to kill Frank in a record 48 hours using his knowledge of DNA. Distressed by the news, Ozzy breaks character and is discovered. He calls in Drix, who blows up the club with a grenade while they escape. The explosion pops a zit on Frank's forehead during a meeting with Mrs. Boyd, ruining any chance for him to apologize. In response, Phlegmming closes the investigation, has Ozzy fired from the force, and orders Drix to leave the city.

Having survived the explosion, Thrax kills his cowardly henchmen and launches a lone assault on the hypothalamus (the portion of the brain that controls body temperature), where he steals a crucial nucleotide. He then abducts the Mayor's secretary, Leah Estrogen, and flees to the mouth to escape. His actions disable the body's ability to regulate temperature, causing a deadly heat spike in the city that develops into a dangerous fever, resulting in mass panic. As Frank is taken to the hospital in a fever coma, Ozzy convinces a dejected Drix not to leave, and the two catch up to Thrax and rescue Leah. However, Thrax uses pollen to induce Frank to sneeze and blow him out of the mouth onto Shane's eye. Drix uses his cannon to shoot Ozzy out of the mouth after Thrax, and Ozzy and Thrax slug it out on Shane's cornea until she blinks and knocks them onto her false eyelashes. Thrax stabs Ozzy and threatens to take down Shane next, but his hand passes harmlessly through Ozzy's cytoplasm and is embedded in the lash. Ozzy flees, just as Shane's tears wash the lash off her face and into a cup of rubbing alcohol, where Thrax disintegrates.

As Frank's temperature goes over 108 degrees, he goes into cardiac arrest. Riding one of Shane's tears as she mourns, Ozzy falls back in to Frank's mouth and restores the missing nucleotide just in time. Having narrowly cheated death, Frank commits himself to living a healthier lifestyle, which means Mayor Plegmming is impeached from office and his opponent Tom Colonic wins by a landslide in the election. Ozzy begins a relationship with Leah and is reinstated into the police force, and Drix is allowed to stay on as his new partner. Phlegmming is reduced to janitorial duty in the colon, and ejects himself by accidentally triggering Frank's flatulence.

Osmosis Jones went through development hell during production. The animated sequences, directed by Tom Sito and Piet Kroon, went into production as planned, 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.

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 on appeal for "bodily humor".

A soundtrack containing hip hop and R&B music as well as "Torian and Andrew's Babblin'" 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.

• Once Upon a Time... Life, an animated series with similar anthropomorphic representations of cells and germs.
• Ozzy & Drix, an animated series that serves as a continuation of the film.
• Cells at Work!, a Japanese manga/anime series with a similar premise.
• Inner Workings, a Disney short film that is set in the human body.
• Inside Out, a Pixar computer-animated film that is set inside the human brain.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Osmosis Jones

• Osmosis Jones at IMDb
• Osmosis Jones at The Big Cartoon DataBase