He never finds Osama bin Laden.
Sorry that sentence was not preempted with a spoiler alert, but in
Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, the
least important character is the one in the title. In fact, from the
get-go, you know Spurlock—in this first-person, haphazard global
trek to find bin Laden—will never find him, let alone figure out
what to do with him if he did. (Kill him? Capture him? Defy Islamic law
and feed him McDonald’s McRib sandwiches for 30 days straight?)
No—here, the planet’s most-wanted terrorist is just a monolithic
figure at the end of the rainbow, one whose appearance is secondary to
the film’s primary goal, which is examining our country’s mangled
foreign policy.
This fact isn’t lost on Spurlock. The hunt for bin Laden has evolved
from a noble effort to capture a mass-murdering terrorist to a
never-ending punchline that illustrates how poorly our comedic War on
Terror has become, while bin Laden himself has gone from an actual
person with a $25-million bounty on his head to a farce along the lines
of the contents of Al Capone’s vault or the Holy Grail Sippy Cup that
Jesus used as a toddler. With US foreign policy ripe for ridicule,
Spurlock—with the supposed motivation of single-handedly
protecting the planet for his expecting wife and future
offspring—embarks on a quest to find the man in the cave, plus do
something our government hasn’t been able to do: win the hearts and
minds of citizens of the Middle East.
Spurlock’s clumsy style of filmmaking—which is heavily
dependent on narration and cutesy animated interludes—borrows
liberally (pun intended) from the Michael Moore playbook, but unlike
the rotund product of Flint, Spurlock is unfathomably likeable, the
sort of filmmaker you want to share a pint with and wholeheartedly root
for on his quest to unearth the most-wanted criminal in the history of
the world. Also unlike Moore, Spurlock’s tactics are seldom
heavy-handed. He seems content with just getting some face time with
the disillusioned masses, and maybe shedding some light on why everyone
hates us and what went wrong—and while he’s at it, playfully
asking about where Osama’s hiding. Spurlock travels to Egypt, Morocco,
Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and
his inquiries about bin Laden’s whereabouts are usually answered with
random pointing, laughter, or—my personal favorite—this
response from a man in Pakistan: “Fuck bin Laden, and fuck America.”
That about sums it up.