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It's just me, myself and I
Published 08 May 2008
Morgan Spurlock's documentary is a masterclass in vain, glib navel-gazing
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (12A)dir: Morgan Spurlock
Following the revelation in Super Size Me that junk food is bad for you, Morgan Spurlock imparts more easily won wisdom in his latest documentary, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?. The film uses the hunt for the al-Qaeda CEO as an excuse to visit places where he was once seen, or where he might be hiding, including Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The resulting travelogue is so banal and fluffy, it would make Judith Chalmers vomit into her handbag.
"I'm not looking for trouble, I'm looking for answers," Spurlock announces at the outset, neglecting to mention that he's also looking for another hit on the scale of Super Size Me, which is why he's swapped McDonald's for the McGuffin represented by Bin Laden. You see, the promised search is really an excuse for Spurlock to show that he's a down-to-earth chap. He breaks bread and cracks jokes with foreign families - who must be kicking themselves for signing the release forms for these cockamamie interviews, or wondering why they didn't get a visit from Michael Moore instead.
After posing lots of not-quite-hilarious questions ("Where's Bin Laden? Is he down there, past the Nutella?" he asks in a grocery store), Spurlock makes the shocking discovery that those outside the US are human beings, too. "We've been in Egypt for a week now," he says at one point, "talking to people who are real people like you and me." Momentarily, he seems on the verge of comprehending how sappy his film is. "We're not gonna sit around a campfire and sing 'Kumbaya'," he insists. "That'd be ridiculous." Maybe so, but on this showing I'd think twice before letting him near an acoustic guitar and a pile of kindling.
If the film were moderately ambitious, it might not matter that basic articulacy remains beyond Spurlock's reach, or that his interview technique consists of mentioning a subject and asking: "What are your thoughts on that?" But the picture's only ideas are dubious ones. Take the opening scene. You're about to watch a film that you know will in some way involve Bin Laden.
The first thing you see on screen is a point-of-view shot speeding through the clouds and heading for the ground, as though the camera were perched on the nose of a falling plane. In fact, the shot ends up on Spurlock, who is in a tizzy because his wife has just fallen pregnant. Do you see what he did there? He made us think that we were seeing a simulation of one of the 9/11 flights going down, then turned the focus on to himself. What a card. I hear he's also available for weddings, divorce hearings and funerals.
But that's the picture in a nutshell. This is not a film about Bin Laden, or about the kind strangers who tolerate Spurlock's facetiousness (or not, in the case of the Orthodox Jews who act out the fantasies of irritated viewers by haranguing him). It's about Spurlock surveying the entire world through the prism of his impending parenthood. I'm very happy for him: becoming a father is a wonderful thing. But was it really necessary to leave super-sized carbon footprints across the globe just so he could find his inner Tony Parsons?
The repeated cutaways to Spurlock's wife back home, praying that he'll return from his travels in time for the birth, really take the biscuit. "Promise you'll be here when it's important, OK?" she pleads, sounding almost like she believes the whole charade. At first I felt angry that Spurlock was expecting us to swallow this fraudulent countdown. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the film was a spoof on western egocentricity: a witless American stumbles around the Middle East, asking everyone what they think of his home country and droning on about his new baby. I was half expecting the end credits to reveal that Morgan Spurlock was played by Sacha Baron Cohen.
Wishful thinking, I fear. The kindest thing you could say about the picture is that it should land Spurlock a job as a BBC foreign correspondent - on the CBeebies channel. This is the sort of film that gives glib, narcissistic, intellectually impoverished navel-gazing a bad name.
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