Theatrical Review of Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

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In "Super Size Me" (2004), Morgan Spurlock horrified his Vegan chef wife by risking his health to demonstrate the horrors of an all-McDonald´s diet. Several years later, the missus is pregnant which quite naturally prompts Spurlock to begin a months-long globe-trotting adventure in order to discover the whereabouts America´s most wanted fugitive Osama Bin Laden.

I didn´t like "Super Size Me" due in large part to Spurlock´s fondness for cheesy graphics and obvious jokes. "Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden?" only ups the ante. The film begins with an animated Mr. and Mrs. Spurlock ambling through a world where danger lurks around ever corner. "How can I raise my child in a world like this," wonders the director. His only answer as a responsible father-to-be is to take on Bin Laden himself, a battle initially presented as a redneck-themed version of Mortal Kombat with a digitized Spurlock and Bin Laden dueling in front of a trailer.

Spurlock´s quest to find Bin Laden is beset by (at least) two obvious problems. For obvious reasons, he never actually expects to find the elusive terrorist and never really takes the search seriously at any point (indeed, Spurlock seems terminally incapable of taking anything seriously). The title quest(ion) merely provides a flimsy structure on which to build his episodic travelogue that takes him to Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan just to name a few destinations.

The second and more serious problem is that Spurlock´s bull-in-a-china-shop approach casts him as the ugly American. He wanders through the streets of various Arab nations asking passersby if they know where Osama Bin Laden is hiding. This incessant questioning comes off as offensive, if not outright racist at times. Imagine accosting random dark-skinned people in any country and asking them how they felt about Robert Mugabe or Charles Taylor. Why in the hell should a random Arab person be asked their opinion about Bin Laden? To be fair, most of the people he asks (at least the ones that made the final cut) react with friendly laughter rather than outrage.

Of course, Spurlock doesn´t intend to offend. He clearly has his heart in the right place, but unfortunately his message in "Bin Laden" is every bit as obvious and unnecessary as in his first film. "Super Size Me" utilized a performance-art stunt to prove that fast food is unhealthy; "Bin Laden" sees Spurlock risking his safety in several nations in order to prove that people everywhere are really pretty much the same. Palestinians just want to live in safety; Afghans just want their kids to get a good education. It´s a noble sentiment, but is it really a surprise to anyone? Perhaps I underestimate the utility of such a humanist message. The American media saturates the public with images of fanatical Muslims screaming "Death to America" in order to dial up the ratings, but are the majority of American viewers gullible enough to believe that represents the entirety of the Muslim world? Maybe so.

Spurlock´s reliance on his impish on-screen persona and his heavy use of graphics casts him as an obvious imitator Michael Moore, but his two films are not nearly as formally accomplished or imaginative as Moore´s. In one scene, an interviewee states that "We have lit the fuse to the bomb" which promptly leads to an animated drawing of… a fuse being lit to a bomb. Such literal mindedness undermines much of the intended humor, as does Spurlock´s inability to resist the most facile one-liners. In one scene, a group of men shake the nuts off a tree because eating them allegedly imbues a man with Viagra-style sexual prowess. Spurlock jokes that he´s leaving these men "to play with their nuts." Har-de-har-har.

The documentary relies heavily on the viewer´s empathy with the director´s on-screen persona. Those who find him charming will get more laughs out of the film; those who (like me) find him well-meaning but annoying will be more inclined to wonder how a 93-minute film can take so damn long to unspool.

Wanting in both form and content, "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" offers little insight and a whole lot of irritation.

3/10

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