Osmosis Jones (2001)

From the opening frame of animation, featuring a saliva bubble helicopter rising high in the valley between two bicuspid molars, to the colossal sneeze that sends Osmosis and Drix riding high on a wave of mucus, the action sequences in "Osmosis Jones" are as fast-paced and tense as those in any live action buddy cop movie. "We were sure from the beginning that we wanted this movie to feel like a big action movie," producer Zak Penn explains. "Something in which the animated portion looked like a cop show or a detective movie, with a heightened sense of design. In addition to that, it has evolved to have a real retro, noirish look that's very original. We didn't just want to make a comedy. We wanted to make something where the wild action and special effects could stand up to what you'd see in a live action film."

Writer Marc Hyman says, "It sounds weird but I had wanted to do a movie about microscopic organisms for a long time. The interplay between these tiny creatures and the real world seemed perfect for film."

The irony that the huge scale of this tiny world brings to Frank's internal "catastrophes" adds an extra layer of satire to the story. "I was shown the script and immediately struck by how imaginative and different it was," animation director Tom Sito remembers. "Someone once said 'Animation should take up where live action leaves off.' With the latest in digital technologies, the latest developments in computers, live action can go pretty far now. In 'Osmosis Jones' I knew we'd be taking people even beyond the borders of reality-based imagination, to places they've never been before."

One of those places is inside the human nose.. .and beyond. "There has never been a movie set inside the human body with the kind of anthropomorphic images presented the way we do it in 'Osmosis,"' Penn points out. "We've discovered a world you've never been to before and couldn't possibly see in live action, and made it real. What might be a bit disgusting on the outside of the body is awesome on the inside. A dam to hold back sinus leakage, for instance, is a sweeping spectacle when seen from the interior perspective. To those outside, a sneeze is just a sneeze. But inside, when the dam breaks in that insular world, it makes for excellent action. It's all about scale."

Hyman conceived of a world inside the body where everything is translated into anatomical terms. "I was fascinated with the idea of the body as a city," he recalls. "I spent weeks thinking about things like which organ would be the mall and are rents cheaper South of the Stomach."

---