STUDIO: The Weinstein Company
RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2008
WRITTEN BY: Jeremy Chilnick & Morgan Spurlock
DIRECTED BY: Morgan Spurlock
GENRE: Documentary
RATING: PG-13

Morgan Spurlock doesn't do anything in moderation. When he wanted to learn about our nation's obsession with McDonald's and rampant problems with nutrition in general, he nearly killed himself with Big Macs and Shamrock Shakes in Super Size Me. When he and his wife tried to live on minimum wage for a month in the premiere of his FX show 30 Days, the resulting health problems from the hard labor he did and his inability to pay for medical attention practically crippled him. How did he top that for the second season premiere? He went to jail. Spurlock, and I don't mean this as a criticism at all, is kind of the bastard child of Errol Morris and those guys from Jackass. He's certainly trying to illuminate a lot more about the human condition that Johnny Knoxville does, but if he needs to get a cow pie in the face to do it, he's willing to go that far.

The inspiration for his latest adventure, chronicled in this week's Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, was the announcement that his wife was pregnant. As most of us do when major life changes come about, it prompted Morgan to examine not only his immediate world but that of the Earth as a whole. To be blunt, it's pretty sh*tty out there right now. How could someone feel comfortable bringing a child into a world where a madman like Osama Bin Laden is still roaming free? Intent on doing something about it himself, Morgan learns self-defense, a little Arabic, and finds a cameraman as crazy as he is, and they head to the Middle East in search of OBL.

Well, not really. The search for Bin Laden is the framework for the true intent of Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? - tearing down the walls of misconception that surround the Middle East on both sides. Politicians, journalists, and even narrative filmmakers have turned that area of the world into a hotbed of anti-American activity to the point where most people get defensive at just hearing the words Muslim or Arab. And the same is true on the other side, where anti-American rhetoric and lies are spewed by politicians from Egypt to Iraq. What Morgan discovers along the way is, to be cheesy, that Middle Eastern people are a lot like you and me. He sits down in the homes of people in a dozen countries and, usually after getting the "Hey, do you know where Osama is?" question out of the way, actually has heartfelt, honest discussions about the state of a world that everyone is a little afraid to bring children into. The Middle East is an issue that we're all going to have to recognize as more than a series of political sound bites, and WITWIOBL (how's that for an acronym?!) goes some of the way in doing so.

Sadly, not far enough. Spurlock tries to get a little of Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Palestine vs. Israel, fatherhood, and more, into one 93-minute movie, and the result feels like an A.D.D. jaunt through a very interesting modern history lesson. Perhaps Spurlock is appealing to people more inclined to pay attention to five- or ten-second clips, and there's something to be said for that but, for me, Osama Bin Laden is an incredibly frustrating case of choppy and almost random editing. There were at least a dozen times when I wanted the conversation to continue or delve deeper into what is being discussed, but Morgan was out the door and off to another country. You really can't tackle the Israel/Palestine issue in any depth in a 93-minute movie, much less do it for ten and move on to another arena of the Middle East. It leads to a movie that's likely to be more frustrating than fascinating to viewers who know that the stereotypes about the Middle East aren't true and are hoping for something a little richer than that.

Should a documentary filmmaker being given a pass based on subject matter alone? If you think so, then Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? with its warm heart, compassionate view of the world, and always-interesting narrator merits a recommendation, but, to me, it feels like a near-miss, a wasted opportunity to really dig deep into a major section of the world that is usually viewed on purely a surface level.