Where In The World Is Osama

Morgan Spurlock shot to fame in 2004 with his documentary Super Size Me, an exposé on the fast food industry in the US. With an original hands on approach Spurlock deserved the plaudits he received. His follow up Where in the World is Osama seems an absurd idea. After finding out that he is to become a father, Spurlock decided to make a documentary on the biggest threat to the US and his unborn child, Osama Bin Laden.

In practice this involves Spurlock travelling around the middle east to find Bin Laden and maybe prove to his fellow rednecks back in the US that not everyone in the Middle East is a religious fanatic out to get them.

Spurlock touches on some of the contentious issues in the Middle East. US support for authoritarian regimes, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict and so forth. But it’s a very basic. Michael Moore has been similarly criticised in the past. The difference is Spurlock hardly makes reference to Iraq an issue which has inflamed anti-western sentiment in the Middle East.

Avoiding controversy hardly makes a great documentary filmmaker. Nevertheless its not all bad. Spurlock seems like a rather affable chap, he communicates well with ordinary people in the middle east. If he achieves anything it is showing that poor people in the middle east, rather than having religious or political motivations, have the same aspirations as the poor anywhere else - to survive.

Ironically Spurlock states later in the film of the faith he has in the good people of the middle east to fight extremism. Maybe someone should have pointed out to him that the rest of the world believed in the good people of America during the presidential elections in 2005 to do the right thing - instead we got four more years of GWB.

Rating: 2/5