Osmosis Jones is this summer's big-budget animated film that you have heard the least about.  Actually this Warner Brothers entry in the yearly 'Let's Compete With Disney Sweepstakes' combines live action sequences featuring Bill Murray (Groundhog Day) directed by the Farrelly Brothers (There's Something About Mary) with some superb animation from Warners feature animation department.  The story revolves around a white blood cell and a cold pill attempting to stave off infection in a cartoon/live action m?lange that is part Dumb & Dumber and part Hemo the Magnificent.  Warners, which is clearly worried about the fate of the film itself and the future of its feature animation division, has not exactly mortgaged the farm in order to publicize Osmosis Jones, which explains why you may not have heard much about the once very high profile project.

While it is not likely to challenge Shrek (see 'Shrek Continues To Shine') or even Atlantis for animated box office supremacy, Osmosis Jones just might find an audience, since gross-out humor has rarely been more popular than it is today (witness American Pie 2).  Retailers who sell a lot of books about animation and cartoon-related merchandise might want to check out the Osmosis Jones Graphic Novel, which is available at a very reasonable cover price of $5.95 from Scholastic Books.  As is the case in Japan with 'anime comics' which are published in a relatively small format using cel art from animated films overlaid with dialogue balloons, the Scholastic Osmosis Jones book looks great (thanks to the cel art) and reads pretty well too.  Trendmasters has an entire line of Osmosis Jones toys ready for manufacture, but when none of the major chains showed any interest in the toys, Trendmasters put them on hold.  Unless the film manages to work its way north of  $150 million, don't expect to see any OJ toys popping up, which leaves the Scholastic book as one of the few ancillary artifacts from this mega-budget animated film.