Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? is not a movie about the hunt for the world’s most wanted man. Instead, Morgan Spurlock’s follow up to Super Size Me attempts to tackle much broader issues, by wandering around the most dangerous places in the Middle East and talking to the common man. The search for Osama is merely a launching point (and an advertising gimmick) leading to that.
As he did with Super Size Me, Spurlock attempts to make these big world issues personal by tying them in to his ordinary, every day life. It starts with his wife, the Vegan girlfriend from his last movie four years ago, now pregnant. About to become a father, Morgan attempts to tie his faux search for Osama to concerns for his child’s safety. To keep his kid safe, Spurlock thinks someone ought to find and capture this guy Osama. Why not him?
So he abandons his pregnant wife for the last nineteen weeks of her pregnancy, and sets off on a globe trotting adventure around the world, visiting all the places with connections to Bin Laden. His journey takes him to some of the most dangerous places on Earth, and give Spurlock a lot of credit, for the most part he walks in unescorted and (outwardly anyway) unafraid. He wanders the streets of Morocco and Saudi Arabia, talking to the common man about the war on terror and, whenever the movie needs to break up all the blaming of America, stops to ask people if they know where to find Osama and films their often comedic reactions.
Much of Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? can be summed up this way: Footage of moderate Arabs in different countries blaming America for all their problems while Spurlock plays happy, upbeat American music in an effort to make what they’re saying more palatable. It’s more than a little manipulative, and weirdly insulting to assume that just because a guy smiles and laughs while he talks about destroying our government then we should like him. Still, the film does do a very good job of giving voice to the less extreme elements in the Middle East. Morgan doesn’t waste time with extremists. Instead he talks to fathers, mothers, kids, the average guy on the street who, while he may think America is the cause of all the problems in his life, doesn’t really wish any particular harm on anyone and would probably be a lot of fun to hang out with over dinner… as long as you’re not a woman.
Morgan does however seem to have learned a few lessons since his last movie. I’m just not sure he learned the right ones. Most of the few criticisms of his masterful fast food documentary were leveled at the way he presented some of the film’s dryer facts, resorting to bland pie charts and stale figures. Here, Spurlock swings to far the other way and chooses to present the movie’s more stale information in, quite literally, a videogame. Each of Osama’s sequences is book-ended with an over-the-top videogame showdown between a computer generated Spurlock and an animated Osama, during which a bunch of information is thrown at us in the middle of a kung fu battle. It’s too much; most of what he’s saying in these sequences is lost amid a cacophony of flying mustache attacks and turban twisters.
As for Osama bin Laden, Morgan doesn’t really seem to be trying to find him. Sure, he occasionally asks after his whereabouts, but mostly it’s a gimmick to link together his guided tour of the Middle East (Though to be fair, in a Q&A following the film Morgan insisted otherwise. I didn’t buy it.). To me, this is a step backward from Super Size Me, which took a more Gonzo approach to documentary filmmaking. There, Morgan was mostly documenting himself to make points about a broader issue. Here, he attempts something similar by awkwardly tying his subject matter into his home life, but it’s all smoke and mirrors. This is still just a guy running around the Middle East filming testimonials from poverty stricken Muslims. Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? felt more like Michael Moore than Spurlock to me, and until now I’d thought there was a big difference between them. Spurlock’s aw shucks sense of humor remains in tact, but his latest is awkward, slanted, and dependent on a gimmick which is feels like a death sentence he spends the entire movie trying to dodge.
Meanwhile, for those of you still wondering whether or not Morgan actually found Osama bin Laden as rumored, well I'm not going to come right out and spoil it here. Instead, I'll spoil it over here.
