Movie Review: Where in the World is Osama bin Laden

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden is the latest film from Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame. The reviews were pretty bad but the film club was seeing it and I had heard that Expelled had a better per screen average and I had to do my part to correct that.

We all generally agreed that the film was better than reviews. Not great, but reasonably good. The framing device of him looking for bin Laden I found kind of lame. It's not spoiling the ending that he doesn't find him. It opened with him learned self defense and getting all his shots. etc. That was pretty fun. He then goes to Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you were really looking for bin Laden, you'd start in Pakistan.

The film is at it's best when he's interviewing average people on the street for their experiences. Obviously it turns out most people hate terrorism and the majority of muslims hate violence and much of the Islamic world dislikes the foreign policy of the US government and are quick to point out they like the American people. Shocker I know, but there isn't much of this view on the news here so it was refreshing to have the truth reinforced. Some Saudi students were clearly not free to talk about their views and some orthodox Jews were hostile to him just being on the street.

When talking to people about their experiences and raising kids and their views on the US, the film works well. Sometimes when he asks random people where Osama bin Laden is, it just comes off as dumb and random and representing Americans poorly. In Afghanistan it was interesting to hear the farmers complain that water is now a problem since the base dug wells. When he embeds with the US troops they let him fire weapons (including a rocket launcher). It struck me as really ironic that he was talking with all these civilians just fine and when he meets our peacekeeping forces he fires weapons into the countryside.

Maybe the reviews set my expectations appropriately low but the film kept my interest and was pretty good. It would have been better if some structural flaws were fixed but it kinda works as a feel good documentary on the war on terror, if that's even possible.