Review of Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (2008) by Siyun F — 03 Apr 2008

[b][size=3][color=black]'Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?"[/color][/size][/b].

[color=gray]Directed by Morgan Spurlock[/color].

[size=3]With 2004's [i]Super Size Me[/i], Morgan Spurlock made a hilarious, informative, shocking documentary that became one of the most accesible and popular docs of the last 10 years. One hit wonder, you might ask? I don't think so, Spurlock is too talented and too entertaining to be a punch-line in ten years. However, with his latest sophomore effort, [i]Where in the World?..., [/i]he delivers an entertaining 90 minutes. The problem lies in the material, which is far too one-note and obvious for a feature-length documentary.[/size].

[size=3]The quest to track down the most wanted man in the world is only a comedic cover-up by Spurlock, obviously. His real mission is to humanize the citizens of Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, and Pakistan. For the most part he does, about ten times too many.[/size].

[size=3]At the beginning of the film, Morgan informs us that his wife is expecting a baby. This presents all sorts of obvious, over-the-top melodrama overseas. In one scene, Morgan visits a school hit by a bomb from the Gaza Strip. He sits in the obliterated classroom looks up the whole in the ceiling where the roof used to be and says, "I couldn't imagine raising my kid in this kind of environment". [/size].

[size=3][i]Where in the World?...[/i] is very funny at times, and its where the film works best. At one point, Morgan looks up "Bin Laden" in the phone book to find an unfortunately named company, "Bin Laden Aviation Agency". He also uses baseball cards to show the different leaders of Al-Qaeda, complete with stats and bio. Very funny stuff.[/size].

[size=3]In the end, Morgan's big profound statement, the one eye-opening experience that he uncovers is that not all Muslims are bad guys. The only thing wrong with that is instead of traveling overseas and risking your life to interview citizens in war-torn countries, he could have looked it up on Wikipedia instead.[/size].

[size=3]Grade: [/size][b][font=Tahoma][size=4][color=black]B-[/color][/size][/font][/b].