Robert W. Upon retrospect and re-reading the review I gave to Spurlock's first film Super Size Me, it turns out that I am giving this one the same score out of ten but somehow Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden just isn't nearly as heartfelt, informative, nor mind changing. Some reviewers say that he makes you think about racism and typecasting and terrorism but I didn't get any of that. He just seemed to come up with this idea right out of the blue and go blundering into various middle eastern countries asking people where Osama is. Somehow after seeing the potential talent in Super Size Me, I thought this was a huge step down for him. Even Super Size Me felt like it was building to a climax that never happened but the thing of it is that there was actual information there and you were watching this disastrous change and the idea of fast food being so deadly is something that anyone could relate to. This on the other hand just doesn't even build to much of anything. The information provided is really sub par and as much as Morgan Spurlock manages to be interesting he just doesn't pull it off for this one.Once again all eyes are on writer, director and star Morgan Spurlock. There is no doubt that he is talented because if anything can be learned from both of his films it's that he has this way of relating to the audience. You don't feel like it's a documentary and he just simplifies everything and tries to make it a personal, important experience but with Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden it just didn't feel like he had the passion behind it. It more seemed like he just thought it was a decent idea. Its not that the film isn't worth seeing just don't expect it to really blow you away. Check out his early work in Super Size Me which I think I underrated the first time around. Regardless he has a lot of talent he just needs the right topic to cover and he'll really breakthrough. 6/10

pjmbdm This movie is a must see for everyone. I expected a comedy which it was in many instances but it was mostly educational with lots of questions and answers that everyday people would ask of everyday people in these Middle Eastern countries. I like the narrative that Morgan used and his easy way put most people at ease, since he obviously was American and I'm sure many people may not have trusted him immediately. Seeing him go to many different countries was also interesting, watching those who would not speak to him at all, even being rude with yelling and shoving, which truly surprised me since he was so earnest and open and very accepting. That was in Israel and that made me feel sad and concerned by the fact that we cannot find peace or understanding if we cannot even talk and ask questions of each other. The movie made me feel like I was traveling with Morgan and interacting with the local people so I very much enjoyed this. I wish every American would see this movie since Muslim people have been so demonized by our government when all they really want is what we want also. I liked this movie so much that I just bought it after seeing the rental.

movedout When Albert Brooks tried to reconfigure a massive cultural chasm into chuckles in the meta-comic "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World", he admitted markedly failure in finding common ground – Americans weren't ready to laugh, but more importantly, Muslims weren't ready. This was way back in 2005 when the War on Terror still had that new car smell. Now, Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me" fame follows Brooks' muddled footsteps into oblivion as he looks for cheap stunts in the Muslim world. Not for any sort of truth or insight, but vulgar shtick. To call this a documentary or even a docu-comedy would seem fallacious to the standings of both genres.Spurlock just isn't as interesting or humorous a personality as he assumes himself to be, which only serves to antagonise the idea of its premise being an odyssey into the treacherous abyss to find the world's most wanted man with only Spurlock as tour guide. He frames this sudden epiphany of a "dangerous post-9/11 world" with his wife getting pregnant. It's a faux-earnest set-up – interspersed with ridiculous allusions to his impending fatherhood and his superfluous wife's presence in the film when it cuts away back home – that becomes increasingly embarrassing as the film wears on, especially when it starts to become an excuse for Spurlock's failures and insecurities over his ill-conceived mission.Approaching this staged existential quandary from a place of blissful ignorance towards the Muslim world, Spurlock feigns mock surprise at how different the Muslim population is compared to America's perception of it was – they aren't all violent terrorists! Cut to Spurlock's histrionic astonishment over that nugget of information. And just as how easily he made his mock-realisation that a constant stream of fast food led to a death wish seem almost a quaint discovery, Spurlock leads the audience to think that he's doing some bold investigative work here by superficially interviewing the hoi polloi of the Gaza Strip and so-called relatives of Osama Bin Laden in Egypt. He makes his unexpected ejection from an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood in Israel become his glib counterpoint to the idea that Muslims aren't bad eggs, but that Middle Eastern religiosity is just plain screwy and insular.Spurlock frequently pollutes his geographical opportunity into pure performance. He makes a dog and pony show about the sociopolitical strife in the region when he obviously knows better. His rehearsed, pandered surprise at the world outside of Manhattan shows a man who doesn't think squat of his audience's own comprehensions on the Middle East since 9/11 and his film ends up becoming just as shallow as his phony-baloney egoist brand of "documentaries".And only Spurlock seems equipped to turn his cultural ignorance into cultural arrogance – completing his transformation into a boorish man-with-a-camera into a Michael Moore-ish buffoon oblivious to his own chicanery. He insincerely coheres his film into a single, predictably trivial idea that these Middle-Easterners are just like us – from their love of family to their ultimate pursuit of peace on their land. Except Spurlock doesn't really believe that. To him, they are like us but they aren't really. His entire self-centred view of the Middle East engenders the film as a wholly facetious work of manipulation and even more egregiously, is ultimately condescending to the very subjects Spurlock explicitly extols at the end of his film.Perhaps we get the real glimpse of Spurlock as a person when he deigns to ask a jocular Egyptian man whether he was about to blow up his car or when he dons distinctively Arabic garb and starts randomly assaulting Saudi Arabian women in the mall about Bin Laden's whereabouts. It is a particularly contemptible redneck hustle that only reveals Morgan Spurlock as the sort of Ugly American that his Middle Eastern interviewees denounce as the true cause of their cultural discordance. Who can blame them?

frankenbenz Let's make something perfectly clear: Morgan Spurlock doesn't really want to find Osama Bin Laden. I can only assume his real motivation for making Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? runs parallel with his motive behind Super Size Me - to educate fat, stupid Americans. Considering everyone around the world knows there's a lot of fat, stupid Americans, you could say the target audience for this documentary would be as big as the one that made SSM a must-see hit. But, to Spurlock's detriment, there are things people are ready to hear and there are things they aren't. Based on the critical and box office woes of WITWIOBL, it would seem no one in the USA wants to hear the truth about the so-called War on Terror.Spurlock might be preaching to the choir of informed critics who know exactly why the US is globally detested, but right here in the good old US of A, he's asking the masses to swallow a very bitter pill. I say the pill is bitter because he spends the duration of his film humanizing Muslims, letting them speak for themselves in ways that radically contradict the conveniently palatable perception Americans have of their (ahem) enemy. The Muslims Spurlock interviews are not gun toting, blood thirsty, irrational, unreasonable or anti-American Jihadists, instead they are the exact opposite: peaceful, reasonable, rational, logical and kind. While there is no doubt a shared resentment towards the US Government, the resentment is justified. Spurlock doesn't pull any punches in his quest, he tells the history of US foreign policy as it happened and this version doesn't hide the fact the US has been in bed with brutal dictators and regimes for a very long time. The fitting quote provided by FDR sums up the US attitude to their profitable alliances with murderous thugs: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." This understanding of US foreign policy begs the question: is it any surprise they hate the US Government? All actions have resultant repercussions and if you consider that US foreign policy has marginalized, oppressed and killed millions of people, then is it any surprise when the victims bite back?There's one particular interview with one of Spurlock's subjects that basically makes us ask: if the US military can describe civilian casualties as "collateral damage," then what do you call the innocent Americans killed by a Jihadist's attack? It's all a matter of perspective and Spurlock posits the uncomfortable reality that war is war and their loss of innocent lives hurt and resonate just as much as ours do.WITWIOBL is by no means a deep or probing study of the issues in the Middle East; it glosses over the complex history of the region and, at times, does so in a very adolescent way. Spurlock, an obvious student of the Michael Moore school of documentary film-making, makes light of many topics by (over) using animated cartoons as a means to parlay a number of ideas. Spurlock uses a mock-video game template to structure WITWIOBL and, despite it being a new approach, it doesn't do the film any good. While on one hand I can appreciate Spurlock is trying to bring a little levity to a very serious subject, his gags are rarely funny and his overall schtick is wearisome. But if you stick with WITWIOBL you'll be rewarded with a film less about Spurlock's self-indulgences and more about having a better understanding of the Muslim world. Spurlock concludes that, ultimately, Muslims and Americans want the same thing: to have a better world to bring up their children in. Fine for those who have kids or want them, but I don't. As a consolation, I'd be happy to settle with living in a world where people were introspective enough to realize it takes two to tango. WITWIOBL might open the eyes of a few, but in a country divided by two political parties, asking a filmmaker to bridge the divide between two foreign world's might be asking a bit much. Nevertheless, WITWIOBL is well intentioned even if it has nothing to do with it's title.http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/