Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Review

[Brando]

Starring: Morgan Spurlock
Directed by: Morgan Spurlock
Written by: Morgan Spurlock, Jeremy Chilnik
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 90 mins
DVD Release: August 26, 2008

Up until now, I’ve considered Morgan Spurlock the athletic, moustached, but most importantly PR-friendly version of the love-him-or-hate-him documentary king, Michael Moore. However, with this more controversial follow-up to his insanely popular Super Size Me, Spurlock moves further left, directly challenging America’s conception of the Muslim faith and those who follow it. Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? isn’t nearly as satisfying as Super Size Me for one big reason: we just don’t believe Spurlock really wants to find Bin Laden. However, Spurlock’s surprisingly danger-free meandering across the Middle East is still very witty, thoughtful, and entertaining, no matter your political slant.

Perhaps it’s just that Super Size Me is a very tough act to follow. The 2004 hit, based primarily on Eric Schloesser’s book Fast Food Nation, was an insightful and even lifestyle-changing glimpse of America’s obsession with great-tasting but toxic “foods”. It seemed even fast food junkies had a hard time walking through the golden arches after seeing Super Size Me, which blended cartoons, amusingly uncomfortable interviews, and the unbelievable decline in Spurlock’s health in making a documentary fun and informative.

For those of you who haven’t been following him recently, Spurlock’s decision to investigate the War on Terror might come as a surprise. However, he’s dabbled with the idea before in his SSM-spawned TV show, 30 Days. Much like Super Size Me, where Spurlock was forced to eat nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days, Spurlock’s show took everyday Americans and plunked them in challenging and often unnerving situations. One included the transplantation of a devout Christian into Dearborn, Michigan, the heart of Muslim America.

Consider Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? to be the 90 minute version of that episode. You see, no where in this film do we believe the East Village, NYC resident truly wants to find the Most Wanted Man Alive. Instead, he travels from Egypt to Palestine to Israel to Jordan to Afghanistan and finally Pakistan talking to everyday Muslims. These are not the crazies found in an episode of ‘24’, the climax in True Lies, or the ‘dirka dirka’ jihadders in Team America. The message in this film, driven home again and again by interviews with average Muslims and Jews, is that these are frightened but proud, wealthy and poor, mature and immature, humans. According to Spurlock’s film, the Muslim who wants to level America with a nuclear weapon is no more prevalent than the American who’d like to do the same to Iraq or Iran.

Spurlock takes aim at a number of targets in this one, but few have national allegiances. Although his goal is to humanize residents of the Middle East, there are moments of intense frustration as he tries to open up lines of conversation with Orthodox Jews along a street in Israel, or Saudi Arabian school boys under the watch of nearby administrators. “I have no opinion of America,” one says, and we begin to understand the greatest danger in the Middle East today: that we’ve given up on discussion.

It’s a worthy message, but not what the title promises. Spurlock, despite his pseudo-Hell’s Angel’s moustache, is no Rambo. His questions on Bin Laden’s whereabouts are anything but serious – we shake our heads along with the man in Morocco who snaps back, “How should I know?” The ending is hardly satisfying for anyone really wondering whether the guy is still hunkered in a Tora Bora cave or a basement apartment in Albany.

Like Moore’s films, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? will preach merely to its own choir. Those who want to know something about the Middle East will learn a few things from this documentary, but unfortunately Morgan Spurlock is probably not the man to bring Americans – rent by two very different political ideologies – together with a film that, like Moore’s offerings, could be manipulatively construed as too carefully edited, selective, or even false.

And yet, it’s hard not to like a movie that refuses to give up on humanity. For an insightful, often funny, but not particularly novel doc, check this one out.