Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
Directed by Morgan Spurlock
In 1989 a lumbering, acerbic filmmaker named Michael Moore upended the documentary form in Roger & Me, his dogged pursuit of the Man and General Motors arch-villain Roger Smith. Moore’s activist doc dispensed with the genre’s feigned objectivity and invisible-auteur tradition while also foreshadowing the YouTube citizen-activist on the horizon.
Nineteen years later, Morgan Spurlock’s (Super Size Me) ostensible hunt for one-time America’s Most Wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, owes much to Moore’s humorous man hunt. In Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Spurlock is a Posse of One tracking the War on Terror’s poster boy. Unfortunately for Spurlock, the comedian-on-a-quest schtick has begun to wear thin. As the Iraq War enters its fifth year, the mugging, Borat-baiting approach to Bush-era incompetence has become a less reliable source of hilarity.
Always foregrounding himself, Spurlock sets up his thesis. With a new baby on the way, keeping the world safe from terrorists is more crucial than ever. The “hook” for Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? is Operation Special Delivery. Like George Bush’s abortive quest for Osama, Spurlock’s snipe hunt comes with its own time frame and agenda. In this case, the time frame is a nine-month gestation. And the agenda is comedy.
Mocking the unholy imagery shared by cable news channels and sports culture, Where in the World is structured into videogame chapters and presents al-Qaeda bad guys with baseball card stats. A guileless, good-guy American in this War-on-Terror for Dummies, Spurlock skips around the globe to an increasingly hostile series of locales, from Egypt to Afghanistan to Pakistan, asking shopkeepers and scholars if they know where Public Enemy #1 is hiding.
Like Moore, Spurlock uses politics as his straight man to set up some carefully crafted hilarity. Some of the humor, though, tends to stick in the throat—like Spurlock golly-geeing over a Saudi Arabian public execution site. Spurlock is especially fond of the sight gag, as when his efforts to penetrate the censorship-prone Saudi Arabian mind-set cues a shot of Spurlock ascending from a shopping mall escalator dressed in full “undercover” thobe and ghutra. In less comic moments, Spurlock is assaulted by irate Orthodox Jews who resent his presence in their Israeli neighborhood. “Dude!” Spurlock protests when one bearded grandfather-type body checks him, sounding very much like the naive American he is, astounded at the tension that divides the Middle East.
In comparison to Moore, Spurlock is the more likable Everyman, yet it is Moore’s comic timing and sense of outrage that make his docs such incendiary entertainments. Spurlock’s gearshifts from goofy to solemn are less graceful and his gimmicks tend toward the forced, like the bit of comic business where he cold-calls bin Ladens in the Saudi Arabian phone book. In another moment of questionable taste during a stop in Afghanistan, Spurlock sounds like Vince Vaughn on his first world tour, joking about “guys busy playing with their nuts” of the Afghan soldiers he accompanies into the mountains, shaking trees for the kind of sustenance Americans take for granted.
Spurlock ends his film with the hardly earth-shattering epiphany that people in the Middle East, from the Palestinians contending with a demoralizing “security” wall to the Afghans attending school in bombed-out buildings, really aren’t so bad.
Torn between a desire to enlighten and entertain, Spurlock more often goes for the funny bone. In Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? political outrage has degenerated into an extended comic stunt.
Directed by Morgan Spurlock
In 1989 a lumbering, acerbic filmmaker named Michael Moore upended the documentary form in Roger & Me, his dogged pursuit of the Man and General Motors arch-villain Roger Smith. Moore’s activist doc dispensed with the genre’s feigned objectivity and invisible-auteur tradition while also foreshadowing the YouTube citizen-activist on the horizon.
Nineteen years later, Morgan Spurlock’s (Super Size Me) ostensible hunt for one-time America’s Most Wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, owes much to Moore’s humorous man hunt. In Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Spurlock is a Posse of One tracking the War on Terror’s poster boy. Unfortunately for Spurlock, the comedian-on-a-quest schtick has begun to wear thin. As the Iraq War enters its fifth year, the mugging, Borat-baiting approach to Bush-era incompetence has become a less reliable source of hilarity.
Always foregrounding himself, Spurlock sets up his thesis. With a new baby on the way, keeping the world safe from terrorists is more crucial than ever. The “hook” for Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? is Operation Special Delivery. Like George Bush’s abortive quest for Osama, Spurlock’s snipe hunt comes with its own time frame and agenda. In this case, the time frame is a nine-month gestation. And the agenda is comedy.
Mocking the unholy imagery shared by cable news channels and sports culture, Where in the World is structured into videogame chapters and presents al-Qaeda bad guys with baseball card stats. A guileless, good-guy American in this War-on-Terror for Dummies, Spurlock skips around the globe to an increasingly hostile series of locales, from Egypt to Afghanistan to Pakistan, asking shopkeepers and scholars if they know where Public Enemy #1 is hiding.
Like Moore, Spurlock uses politics as his straight man to set up some carefully crafted hilarity. Some of the humor, though, tends to stick in the throat—like Spurlock golly-geeing over a Saudi Arabian public execution site. Spurlock is especially fond of the sight gag, as when his efforts to penetrate the censorship-prone Saudi Arabian mind-set cues a shot of Spurlock ascending from a shopping mall escalator dressed in full “undercover” thobe and ghutra. In less comic moments, Spurlock is assaulted by irate Orthodox Jews who resent his presence in their Israeli neighborhood. “Dude!” Spurlock protests when one bearded grandfather-type body checks him, sounding very much like the naive American he is, astounded at the tension that divides the Middle East.
In comparison to Moore, Spurlock is the more likable Everyman, yet it is Moore’s comic timing and sense of outrage that make his docs such incendiary entertainments. Spurlock’s gearshifts from goofy to solemn are less graceful and his gimmicks tend toward the forced, like the bit of comic business where he cold-calls bin Ladens in the Saudi Arabian phone book. In another moment of questionable taste during a stop in Afghanistan, Spurlock sounds like Vince Vaughn on his first world tour, joking about “guys busy playing with their nuts” of the Afghan soldiers he accompanies into the mountains, shaking trees for the kind of sustenance Americans take for granted.
Spurlock ends his film with the hardly earth-shattering epiphany that people in the Middle East, from the Palestinians contending with a demoralizing “security” wall to the Afghans attending school in bombed-out buildings, really aren’t so bad.
Torn between a desire to enlighten and entertain, Spurlock more often goes for the funny bone. In Where In the World Is Osama Bin Laden? political outrage has degenerated into an extended comic stunt.
