Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? details
| Format: | 12 DVD |
|---|---|
| Starring: | Morgan Spurlock |
| Director: | Morgan Spurlock |
| Genres: | Documentary - General, Special Interest - Religion |
| Studio: | ELEVATION |
| Collections: | Exclusive Films |
| Name | Discs | |
|---|---|---|
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? |
12 Feature |
DVD Information
| Run time: | 1 hour 33 minutes |
|---|---|
| Rental release: | 01 Sep 2008 |
| Main languages: | English |
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Most helpful review
Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?
By SAI81 (360 reviews) from Tonbridge , 20 May 2008[Highly rated reviewer]
Morgan Spurlock’s first film, Super Size Me, asked a question with an incredibly obvious answer. “What will happen if I eat only McDonalds food for 30 days?” You’ll get fat, obviously. It worked though, because Spurlock wrapped the answer up in an entertaining and often very funny film. His second film takes the same basic idea, this time the question is the film’s title and the obvious answer is “dunno”. Lightning, however, fails to strike twice, because this is an astonishingly boring film, which tells anyone who is even slightly informed about the Middle East, nothing they didn’t know going in.
A big part of the problem is Spurlock’s complete lack of an interview technique. His chatty style was disarming in Super Size Me, but the issues here are so much larger and so much more serious that it just doesn’t work. At best his encounters with people are slapdash and reveal nothing, at worst he perpetuates a stereotype of Westerners that is deeply unhelpful. His trademark here is to walk up to ordinary people, have a normal conversation and then ask “Where can I find Osama Bin Laden?” Over and over he ploughs this furrow, learning nothing from the question and often simply coming off as rude (as he does with a shop assistant he drops the question on while she’s helping him pick up some hand cream).
Spurlock says that he was spurred on to make this film by the imminent arrival of his son and a desire to make the world safer for him; laudable, but he achieves nothing with this film. He gets no new insight into what drives people to become terrorists, no new answers as to how we can stop young Muslims becoming radicalised and offers up no ideas to actually achieve his stated aim of making the world safer. Honestly Morgan, just join Amnesty International and shut up.
There is an attempt to make the film funny, as Super Size Me was, through computer game style animation and Spurlock’s slightly sardonic persona, but it falls flat because nothing about this situation is funny. It’s sad and depressing, but it’s sure as hell not funny.
Perhaps the only thing of worth that Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden does is to show, explicitly, that most middle easterners, most Muslims, don’t agree with Bin Laden. They don’t want to destroy our way of life; they simply want to get on with theirs, without having fear bullets and bombs every day. Of course if you have half a brain you know this already, but at least the film does make it very plain.
I don’t know who this film is for, other than Morgan Spurlock, it feels like little more than ‘My Really Dangerous Holiday Video’ and it certainly doesn’t belong on a cinema screen.- Was this review helpful to you?
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(31)Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden
By Kevolar (1 review) , 13 Mar 2012Intelligent look at Muslims in World hot-spots and their opinions of U. S. foreign policy and the War on Terror all to a back-drop of his wife's first pregnancy and delivery.- Was this review helpful to you?
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In a wattery grave
By a customer , 28 Dec 2011Great conclusion to a very interesting movie.
Didn't really care for the 'Burger' movie, but this one had a very human touch... very universal.
Well done Morgan.
PS: Love the Blue Grass tune.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?
By a customer , 04 May 2011Spurlock would have had more success looking for Osama in his hotel room than in the Pakistan mountains. No matter; if he still want's to find him, all he needs to do is check the bottom of the Ocean.- Was this review helpful to you?
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What in the world were you thinking?
By sevenism (3 reviews) , 21 Apr 2011I enjoyed Supersize Me, but Morgan Spurlock is unsuited to a serious documentary.
This is really about Muslim attitudes towards terrorism, which are interesting; but Spurlock wanders around the Middle East, almost implicating ordinary people by asking them 'where is Bin Laden?', then cracking offensive jokes.
He displays a typically insular ignorance to complex issues such as American Foreign Policy and Israel/Palestine.
The film is further trivialized by the juxtaposition between poverty/war and his wife going to ante-natal classes: the ostensible purpose of the documentary that he needs to find Osama before his wife gives birth (so that his kid grows up safe from terrorism).
Yesterday, Tim Hetherington, the director of Restrepo, was killed in Libya. This adds a poignancy to Spurlock's laissez-faire attitude to safety and subject matter.
If you want to watch a film covering these topics watch Restrepo, not this.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Only when strapped into a seat
By VillageVicarage (19 reviews) from England , 05 Apr 2010That this film was targeted, whether intentionally or not, towards an American audience is axiomatic. I feel it could have been a fantastic film, but sadly Spurlock’s rather narcissistic attitude shifted the balance away from an intense subject. It left me wondering how the film would have progressed had it been conceived at the advent of a new presidency. It’s certainly worth watching with the proviso that you keep your expectations limited to merely diversionary entertainment, such as whilst being strapped in an airline middle seat between two Americans wearing gang colours. But if you’re seeking to be inspired or motivated in some direction, I feel you’d do much better watching something else. Nevertheless, it was a suitable 'petit divertissement' from watching the passenger next to me clip his toenails!- Was this review helpful to you?
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