The Failure of OSMOSIS JONES

You know what? I think that I should just do an article on the failure of “Final Fantasy” instead, because by all accounts that film was the biggest failure of 2001, and one of the biggest Hollywood failures in film history. You may have heard by now that it cost Sony/Square $145 million and four years worth of work, yet they earned just $33 million. I repeat, there is an astonishing $112 million difference between the production cost and the box-office receipt. I said to myself (when I had first heard of its failure), “Holy Lord.”

The fact that “Osmosis Jones" failed was less surprising. Chris Rock had been toned down to unrecognition, and the rest of the principals had been miscast. The live-action portions of the film just don’t work because the viewer has to make a mental distinction between the two genres every time one segues into the other. The Farrelly brothers directed the live-action sequences and did not bother with the animated sequences because they couldn’t direct an animated sequence to save their lives. Those duties were left to Piet Kroon (“The Iron Giant”) and Tom Sito (“The Prince of Egypt”, “Aladdin”), who helped the film to rise above the threadbare plot that it had been assigned.

David Hyde Pierce can’t be allowed to pair up with a comedian. Not that he was absolutely horrible or anything, but he was a bad match to Chris Rock’s Osmosis. And in order to reach kiddie audiences, “Osmosis Jones” had to come down from a PG-13--to a PG. And that was a joke. I am an expert on Farrelly Bros. movies--you’ll never see a decent PG film on their resume. NEVER. Anyway, the film was hacked and slashed to meet the standard, and mucho funny material was left on the cutting room floor.

Brandy was the wrong choice to play Chris Rock’s girlfriend, to say the least, since there's nothing more that could be said. And who can explain casting William “Fell Asleep During the Filming of the Priceline Commercial” Shatner as the voice of the mayor? An enigma. Everyone, every soul in Hollywood knows how stilted Shatner’s acting is. Oh well.

So with all that going for “Osmosis Jones”, it’s no wonder it failed miserably at the box office.

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