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Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? (2008)
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Synopsis
Morgan Spurlock follows his junk food doc 'Supersize Me' with a trek across the globe to find the illusive Osama Bin Laden.
Movie review
From Time Out London
Like a frat boy lumbering into the BBC to host the Today programme, Morgan ‘Supersize Me’ Spurlock ‘does’ the Middle East in this garishly packaged, low-level doc that, as the title hints, is hooked on Spurlock’s quest to find Bin Laden. It’s giving away nothing to say that he fails in his mission; it’s a cheap trick, employed by Spurlock to propel himself from Egypt to Afghanistan, via Morocco, Israel and Saudi Arabia, to take the temperature of the region.He leaves behind him in Manhattan a pregnant, worried wife, which offers a convenient, if sickly, human angle to his journey. He travels about, interviewing people on the ground and trying to understand anything and everything about the region with very little focus beyond his spurious search for a man who at one point he caricatures in an animated insert as a bearded version of MC Hammer.
Spurlock’s investigation is flawed from the beginning. A visit to an American self-defence specialist illicits histrionics which lump the entire Middle East into a category marked ‘terrorist’. It’s the first in a series of condescensions and crass interventions that include Spurlock riding a camel in Egypt, trying to force interviews with veiled women in Saudi and provoking Orthodox Jews to violence in Jerusalem.
What Spurlock demonstrates here – and full credit to Michael Moore – is how hard it is to combine popular style with proper intent. How can you view seriously anyone who ‘embeds’ himself with US troops in Afghanistan only to fire a rocket into a hillside for laughs? ‘That was awesome,’ grins Spurlock inanely.
Author: Dave Calhoun
Time Out London Issue 1968, May 8-14, 2008
User reviews of this film
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- Mike said...
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Posted on May 12 2008 11:46
I saw the film at Odeon Covent Garden on the opening nigtht where Spurlock appeared and talked for 30mins
with Q&A after the film.
Every audience laughged at every ten minitues during the film, and I found the film very successful for the intent of the director.
Average people in the Middle-East are not interested in
Bin Ladin. They are innocent and nice and peaseful people. This aspect is never reported in propaganda American mass media. Spulock too knows well that the
person is ilusonary. But it is conspiracy theory to say
that 911 is a self-trick caused by American government.
This is the best approach a concious American filmmaker achieved for 911. This is masterpiece followed up to "Michel Moore's Fareiht 911" - Report as inappropriate
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Cast & crew
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Producer: Morgan Spurlock
With: Morgan Spurlock
Genre(s): Documentaries
Rated: 12A
Duration: 90 mins
UK Release: May 9 2008
US Release: Apr 18 2008
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