WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?

Morgan Spurlock Written by: Jeremy Chilnick, Morgan Spurlock Starring: Morgan Spurlock,Alexandra Jamieson Distributed by Optimum Releasing Film is released in the U.K. on May 9th 2008

rating: 1

Review by Michael Edwards Who's up for some gimmickry? Michael Moore's understudy returns for some more questioning of America's assumptions about the world around them. The premise of this outing is that Morgan Spurlock's wife is about to give birth to his child and he is worried. The world is a scary place full of junk food, muggers, lions and the films of Uwe Boll. But foremost among his concerns is that massive issue that we all hear about every day: global terrorism. And because the only things his target audience 'knows' about terrorism is that it's what Arabs do and some guy called Osama Bin Laden started it he decided that the most entertaining way to address the issue would be a journey around the Arab world ostensibly in search of the infamous harbinger of death. Now I know that last sentence may seem provocative, but believe me I have chosen my words carefully. This documentary has a clear target audience of (primarily American) 'ordinary folk' who don't know much about international politics but do know that they don't like being attacked by the A-rabs. His aim is therefore to show these ordinary folk that the people attacking them are not representative of their ethnic, cultural or national heritage at all but are rather extremists among a group of people who, at the bottom of it all, are just the same as us. Of course, to get into this theme he has to open the movie with a series of humourous gags and silly graphics, for example his Tekken-esque battle with a CG Osama and his specially written 'Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?' song but the comedy doesn't last very long before it begins the lengthy and mundane process of driving home Spurlock's simple point. What's more concerning however is that his point, and his methods supposedly proving it, is fundamentally flawed. I know it's noble to say we're all the same, and I would certainly agree that we have certain things in common and we are all equal, but the fact is WE ARE NOT THE SAME. The problem isn't that ignorant fools think Muslims or people from the Arab world are different, (it's fine to be different, surely the ridiculous volume of indie flicks recently has taught us that if nothing else), it's that they think they're all evil terrorists! And that Spurlock believes he is proving his point by interviewing people on the street from primarily pro-Western nations like Morocco and Egypt is frankly ridiculous and relies on the assumption that his core audience won't know anything about these places, much less have visited them. Most concerning for me, however, is the only people he depicted as bad in the film is Israeli's. I don't want to get into my own views on this complicated and sensitive issue, that's not my purpose here, but as a documentarist it is his duty to be fair and he wasn't. He devoted a lot of time to Palestinians and other supporters of Palestine discussing and criticising the role of Israel in the Middle East, and the only shots of Israelis were when they were in tanks or chasing him away when he tried to interview them. Now, I reiterate, I am not defending Israel's actions in the Middle East, or even making a statement on the general political atmosphere in Israel but I know for a fact that not all Israeli's are angry xenophobes who ride around in tanks. That should be a minimum awarded to a nation in a documentary of this sort which is bound to get a lot of attention, particularly as the ridiculous depiction completely contradicts his own core goal of showing we're all the same underneath. Politics aside, this film is really boring, not very insightful and has the lamest ending you could imagine. I'm sure you all know well in advance that he doesn't find Osama Bin Laden, but the final scene of his journey made me wince. It was contrived, anticlimactic and completely overacted. So I guess a fair summary of this film would be that whilst I respect its noble cause of countering ignorance and bigotry, I think it completely fails to achieve its aims. It comes across as biased, poorly thought out and, worst of all, boring. WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN? is released in UK cinemas on 2nd of May.

And I managed to get an interview with Morgan Spurlock - find out if meeting the man himself made me eat my words soon...