Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden

Review By: Brian DePasquale
BrianDePasquale @TheCinemaSource.com

Morgan Spurlock, director of the hugely successful docu-comedy Super Size Me!, is worried about the status of the safety of the world. His wife is pregnant with their first child and Morgan wants to make sure his child grows up in a secure world. Along with a small crew, he travels to the Middle East to find Osama Bin Laden and gain understanding of why the area is so volatile.

Sound contrived to you? It is. The premise for Spurlock's new documentary Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden is absurd to the Nth degree. As he did with Super Size Me!, the Mac attacker tries to tackle big worldly themes and personalize them through his own experiences. With his previous film, the idea worked. Here, it comes off a bit self-righteous. Why did the filmmaker feel the need to make up such a ludicrous angle for telling a story about the War on Terror? The Middle East is arguably the most significant story in the world today and you are a journalist looking for a good story. Obviously with this film you express interest in figuring out things for yourself. That should be enough for the audience, don’t you think?

The Bin Laden angle is a superficial means of getting Spurlock to countries such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan to meet with citizens and start raising the same questions as every other film about the Middle East. Unfortunately, that angle starts his documentary off on the wrong foot and leads the film down a path it struggles to return from. Rarely have I seen a documentary with less focus. The filmmaker bounces from country to country talking with locals about their feelings about U.S. foreign policy (hint: they don't like it) and exploring areas of the world people like Spurlock are not welcome with little sense of purpose. While the risk is admirable, the intent and result is not.

Most of the time Spurlock goes for the funny joke rather than the enlightening observation. I have no qualms with his penchant for comedy, but I do raise questions about his integrity as a documentarian. Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? has more in common with Borat than anything Ken Burns would make for PBS. Sure, there are moments when Spurlock scrapes the surface of interesting visuals and uncovers some captivating material. He speaks with members of a village overrun by the Taliban and gets their perspective on the