Too much of everything

One of my all time favorites.

Instant Favorite.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Whaddya do when your last pic made $11 mil at the box office (not bad for a $300, 000 investment) and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary? Well, if you are Morgan Spurlock, writer and director of Supersize Me!, you put down your burger, get your shots and head to the Middle East to shoot a documentary about your mock serious search for the world's most wanted terrorist. After all, with his wife expecting the couple's first child the future father figures he's gotta do something: "If the CIA and FBI can't find him and I'm going to make the world safe for my kid it's time for a new plan. If I've learned anything from big budget action movies it's that complicated global problems are best solved by one lonely guy crazy enough to think he can fix everything before the credits roll." Spurlock begins his quest for OBL (as he calls him) with his tongue firmly in his cheek but as he travels through Egypt, Israel, Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian West Bank and realizes the depth of anti-American feeling the tone of the film becomes sombre and introspective. ("It's hard for me to see how damaged the image of the country that I love and care about has become.") Don't expect any startling insights into the Middle East conflict. Spurlock films the trip from the viewpoint of an average American coping with culture shock and trying to make sense out of a complex situation. Whether he is thinking out loud on a voice-over or addressing the audience straight to camera Spurlock invites us along to share his discoveries. And who better for a tour guide? Riding with a Jerusalem bomb squad to check out a suspicious-looking package, heading into "hard core Taliban country" with a US military patrol or approaching total strangers in a crowded Arab marketplace and asking them if they can put him in touch with Osama bin Laden Spurlock is witty, smart, observant and unflappable. The majority of soundbites are from everyday men and women interviewed on the street, around the dinner table or in a desert village. (A young man in Tel Aviv compares the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate to a game of musical chairs. "Somebody is left without a chair ... but everybody needs to sit somewhere.") In the end Spurlock does not find OBL. What he does discover, however, is that whether they live in big cities or small mountain villages "there are a lot more people out there who are just like us then there are who are just like him."

Not quite up to Morgan Spurlock's superlative documentary SUPER SIZE ME, WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN is still topical and interesting. Where Super Size Me had a distinct focus, this newest documentary loses that. Let me explain...Initially set up as a means to make the world a safer place for Morgan, his mate, and their future child, Morgan sets out to find bin Laden so that he can help the world become a safer place. Knowing that the U.S. has spent billions of dollars and countless soldier hours looking for this elusive, tall, dialysized jihadist, Morgan figures maybe all it'll take is one determined future father.Scouring the globe as if he were Carmen Sandiego (Everyone gets that analogy, right? No? Look it up), Spurlock becomes a fearless explorer in and around the Middle East, searching for this dangerous killer. But what starts out as a journey of righteousness turns more into a discovery of the differences that divide the Muslim world from itself, from western religious doctrine, and from the policies of the U.S.. This is where things went a bit haywire for the film. Although most viewers will probably be forgiving of this since journeys like this often lead down other paths, it still felt awkward as Spurlock jumped around between political dignitaries, religious fanatics (on both sides), and U.S. ground-based troops in Afghanistan and how they felt about the war effort.It is commendable that Spurlock used animation (like the aforementioned Carmen Sandiego) to get his point across. The silliness of the animation was meant to show how crazy his quest might seem to us but, in the end, it comes across as something he simply had to do ...if not for his future kid, then for himself and the rest of us who live his experience vicariously.The ending is a pretty big letdown and it didn't line-up very well with the beginning of the film. Seeing the alternate ending on the DVD, I really feel it would've been a much better true ending to the documentary.Still, this is a very topical issue that shows not just one man's quest for answers, but a challenge to the U.S. that shows how close one man can come to finding Osama. Perhaps the U.S. military really doesn't want to find this madman. What reason would we have then for staying over there? Oil? Of course not!

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Morgan Spurlock (remember, the guy who ate all the food on the McDonald's menu?) suddenly learns that his girlfriend is pregnant with his first child and, amongst all the other emotions that must be running around in his head, he thinks: I've got to make this world a safer place for her to grow up in and, since the CIA and the American Special Forces, with all their technology and man-power, haven't managed to do it, I will achieve said safer world by hunting down and claiming the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. His hunt takes him from Egypt, to Morrocco, to the East Bank in Palestine, to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and Pakistan, interviewing possible leads along the way, interviewing key religious figures on each side of the religious war as well as hearing from everyday people in these war torn, repressed countries their views views on Americans around the world and their foreign policy.So Spurlock, the man probably best remembered for 'the McDonalds experiment' film Super Size Me in 2004, has a sudden need to find the number one terror link in the world to make the world safer for his newborn child? Only he will know if this is really true or if he just wanted some more attention in the film world after SSM four years ago, which this didn't get half the exposure of. And quite rightly, for, although an interesting piece of food for thought, WITWIOBL? doesn't leave quite the same impact as his hamburger odyssey (although the motivations behind it are arguably much more important.) The film starts by noting the most glaring, niggling fact that the Americans, with the most sophisticated, advanced technology in the world, have spent nearly ten years looking, without success, for a man hiding in a cave. Given his health was reputedly failing when the hunt for him began, and with the above fact in mind, I would draw the conclusion that Bin Laden is almost certainly dead now. I would also summarise that the president and the military chiefs of America are aware of this. If you're of the viewpoint that they deny it to keep the war effort going, that's what you think, but Spurlock obviously feels there is some point to his new film, so that's why he made it.It's easy to compare the guy to another famous modern documentarian, Michael Moore, with his use of humour to accentuate serious subject matter. The opening skit, involving dancing bin Laden's, is proof of this. But, also like Moore, he has a tendency to be one sided, obviously trying to plug his opinion in some way rather than showing a balanced argument from both sides. Here, Spurlock actually seems less interested in hunting for bin Laden than plugging the message to the world that' we only hate muslims because of what the American media show us, most of them are really decent, ordinary people like you and me.' While this is undoubtedly true, it detracts from the point of the film and is pretty obvious. Even when he visits Saudi Arabia (where church and state are unseperated), we see only young muslims reacting to what they are being taught, most obviously when he interviews two young students in a classroom and is forced to stop the interview when he asks them their feelings about Israelis. In fact, it says a lot that these are the people he receives the most hostile reaction from, encountering aggression when visiting an area where a sign asks (commands) male passers by not to go through their area in 'immodest dress', showing it's not just muslims who haven't got rid of out-dated ideas in the modern world and who adhere too tightly to dress codes.Spurlock ditched his original idea (probably knowing he was really on a wild goose chase) and instead spends most of his film trying to plug his left wing ideologies to the audience. It casts an interesting light on facts surrounding the hunt for Osama and the religious conflicts that still go on in the world, but the 'muslims are just like us' vibe sends it all off course from what it was really trying to do. ***

Upon retrospect and re-reading the review I gave to Spurlock's first film Super Size Me, it turns out that I am giving this one the same score out of ten but somehow Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden just isn't nearly as heartfelt, informative, nor mind changing. Some reviewers say that he makes you think about racism and typecasting and terrorism but I didn't get any of that. He just seemed to come up with this idea right out of the blue and go blundering into various middle eastern countries asking people where Osama is. Somehow after seeing the potential talent in Super Size Me, I thought this was a huge step down for him. Even Super Size Me felt like it was building to a climax that never happened but the thing of it is that there was actual information there and you were watching this disastrous change and the idea of fast food being so deadly is something that anyone could relate to. This on the other hand just doesn't even build to much of anything. The information provided is really sub par and as much as Morgan Spurlock manages to be interesting he just doesn't pull it off for this one.Once again all eyes are on writer, director and star Morgan Spurlock. There is no doubt that he is talented because if anything can be learned from both of his films it's that he has this way of relating to the audience. You don't feel like it's a documentary and he just simplifies everything and tries to make it a personal, important experience but with Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden it just didn't feel like he had the passion behind it. It more seemed like he just thought it was a decent idea. Its not that the film isn't worth seeing just don't expect it to really blow you away. Check out his early work in Super Size Me which I think I underrated the first time around. Regardless he has a lot of talent he just needs the right topic to cover and he'll really breakthrough. 6/10