Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (Morgan Spurlock, 2008)

[domino harvey]

Early word on this doc about Spurlock's own quest for Bin Laden is that it does what Albert Brooks tried to do with his last film in terms of how Middle Eastern cultures view Americans, only successfully. I think it's probably hip to hate on Spurlock, but his ideas are nothing if not novel.

[Antoine Doinel]

I definitely enjoy Morgan Spurlock's work and find it thankfully free of the shrill tone Michael Moore can make at his worst. Super Size Me was fun, but I think Spurlock really found his stride with his FX series, 30 Days. For a show that could end up being nothing but stunts, each episode really found the humanity of the people involved. I'm really curious to see what Spurlock has done with his latest effort, and what caused the film to get purchased not even fifteen minutes into its heavily guarded industry screening at Cannes.

[CSM126]

One can only pray that Rockapella and sleuthing youngsters on the hunt for the missing Taj Mahal are involved somehow.

[Svevan]

One can only pray that Rockapella and sleuthing youngsters on the hunt for the missing Taj Mahal are involved somehow.

RIP The Chief

I could do without stunt-documentaries taking over non-fiction cinema; Spurlock's work is valuable as videotaped experiments, a couple steps up from Steve-O and Jackass thanks to its social purpose.

[Antoine Doinel]

The film has now screened at Sundance, and no, Spurlock didn't find Bin Laden but that doesn't appear to the point. Here's a positive review from the LA Times. Clip

Q&A with Morgan Spurlock.

[Antoine Doinel]

Trailer.

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this tonight at a preview screening and was very disappointed. The first twenty minutes of the film are "walk-out-of-the-movie" bad. If you want to see Osama lookalikes dancing to MC Hammer, terrorist "baseball cards" and a Mortal Kombat themed credit sequence where Spurlock battles Osama then this is the film for you. With two people on writing credits and I think an astonishing seven people with "story" credits there are several moments that are obviously and clearly scripted it's embarassing. Moreover, Spurlock's condescending and trivial tone (I guess to make it easier for the casual filmgoer to identify with him) are a real detriment to a film that has several poignant scenes. When Spurlock stops trying to be funny, he is an effective and moving filmmaker and he squanders a great opportunity with this film to really and truly interact with Middle Easter and Eastern cultures. Instead, we get a lot of montages and stage vignettes that do very little to convey whatever message of understanding Spurlock is driving at.

A big, overhyped, wasted opportunity.

[CSM126]

In other words, it's right in line with Super Size Me.

[margot]

In other words, it's right in line with Super Size Me.

Super size me was way less gimmicky and pointless than this and at least was fun to watch.

[CSM126]

In other words, it's right in line with Super Size Me.

Super size me was way less gimmicky and pointless than this and at least was fun to watch.

Well, I suppose there had to be someone who likes movies about fat guys puking.

[colinr0380]

A recent Mark Kermode review said one of the problems with the film was that Spurlock is hamstrung by the conceit of 'finding' Bin Laden and has to keep coming back to his doomed from the outset search (because if it wasn't we'd have been hearing about it on the news for months now!) when it would be better if they'd just dropped that hook early on to actually get more in depth with the people Spurlock is interviewing. Kermode ended up wondering if he was constrained by the producers wanting him to get back to the tired title gag of asking foreigners if they know where a wanted terrorist is.

That, coupled with Spurlock's 'smart man playing dumb' persona, according to another of the guests on the Newsnight Review show, lent a similar kind of manipulative, patronising air to the film as there was in Super Size Me.

I personally think Spurlock seems a very nice guy but I couldn't stand the "gosh, wow, I never knew that" tone of Super Size Me and the 30 Days show of creating situations so contrived that any actual point is lost under the 'sexing up' of the situation.

I'm expecting the next Spurlock film to be called 'Knifey' and be about the way that having a child around the house has made him aware that kitchen knives are dangerous, a point he illustrates by cutting himself once an hour (illustrating through time compression the amount of accidental cuts someone gets over the course of forty or fifty years using knives) until he is told by his doctor that he is dangerously close to a coma due to his blood loss.

The world responds by banning metal cutlery and forcing everyone to purchase plastic cutlery at three times the price that they would have bought it at earlier if they had really wanted it!

(This of course leads to an environmental stand off with Al Gore in his new documentary 'Plastic Knife, Natural Disaster')