The Weinstein Co.
Morgan Spurlock searches for the world's most wanted man in "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?"
Morgan Spurlock is such a genial, good-natured guy that you can't resist him, even when his vehicle of self-delivery is as awkward and ass-backward as "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?", Spurlock's new documentary. Spurlock's likable-Joe persona (and his ever variable hipster-meathead facial hair) are both the method and the message of "Where in the World," in which the "Super Size Me" director travels to Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other contemporary fear-zones, purportedly in search of "the world's most dangerous man."
Most people in those places find Spurlock as appealing as we do, it seems. He swaps Erma Bombeck-style parenting gags with a Moroccan family in a dire shantytown outside Casablanca and a nomadic Afghan family who live in a United Nations tent they bought on the black market. He even cracks up a truly frightening Saudi imam who has just preached a sermon urging Allah to "make Palestine a graveyard for the Jews" and to "make Iraq a graveyard for the Christians." I'm not dismissing Spurlock's desire to find humor and humanity even in that guy; there's an insight at work there that, like so much of this film, hovers on the cusp between stupidity and profundity.