Today, McDonald’s... Tomorrow, al-Qaeda! | Morgan Spurlock attempts to wipe out Islamofascist terrorism in Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?
Directed by Morgan Spurlock. Opens Fri, May 16.
2 1/2 stars
He’s no comedian, but it’s safe to say that Morgan Spurlock’s edifying journeys are a little more entertaining than enlightening. Audiences didn’t flock to Super Size Me hoping to learn something about the fast-food industry; they were lured in by his Jackass-style stunt of subsisting for a month on an all-McDonalds diet. Plenty of documentary filmmakers “go the distance,” so to speak, but Spurlock’s idea of going the distance—whether it be eating Big Macs until your liver and libido both fail you, or going to jail for a month (like he did on an episode of his TV series 30 Days)—is a beast of an entirely different brood.
Spurlock’s approach is relentless, funny, and all too easy to get swept up in. It’s hard not to root for this regular guy with his soup-strainer grin... and it’s even harder to watch him fall so hopelessly flat in Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?
The film doesn’t depart from Spurlock’s proven formula of begging a pervasive question and then enacting some daring experiment to arrive at an answer we already saw coming. Take Super Size Me: we know full well that our sedentary lifestyle choices do far more to amp up our cholesterol and kill us than the fast-food giants—but we reveled in the month Spurlock spent eating himself halfway to death in order to drive his point home.
With WITWIOBL, it’s more of the same: we know full well that the people of the Middle East have been vilified and demonized by North American media and pop culture, and we know ignorance and intolerance are the language of our age—but what to do? That question, says Spurlock, has eluded governments, leaders, and communities the world over since 9/11. But now, with a baby on the way, Spurlock feels mounting anxiety about bringing a child into a world of turbulence and violence, and decides to make a difference. “If watching Hollywood movies has taught me anything,” he says, “it’s that if the world needs saving, it’s best done by one lone white male willing to face danger head on, action hero-style.”
And so, Spurlock decides to fly off to the Middle East and hunt down the archvillain himself, Osama bin Laden. He prepares for his trek with some hilarious over-the-top survival training (lots of grenade-dodging and fake hostage scenarios), and countless immunizations, not to mention the disapproving looks of his pregnant girlfriend Alex (his granola gal-pal of Super Size Me fame).
So far, so good. But Spurlock’s eventual trip is painfully anticlimactic: he moves at a grueling pace across Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel, talking to government officials, religious leaders, and (most importantly) everyday people about their perception of the U.S. war on terror and the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted man. All he manages to conjure up are the same split opinions and uncertain stances that make up the Middle East’s interpretation of the West: some loathe bin Laden’s fundamentalist perversion of Islam, while others laud his holy war as admirable; some hate the American people, but most hate the government; the media manipulates either side of the struggle; Bush is an asshole.
It’s barely enough insight for one hour of Anderson Cooper 360, let alone a feature film—and Spurlock looks noticeably exhausted throughout. Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? also has the misfortune of arriving in Edmonton the same week as a much more insightful, rigourous, and thoughtful war-on-terror documentary, Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side. Spurlock does his best to make us think a little and laugh a lot, but some things just aren’t funny anymore.
