Sundance Review: Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?

I received a call today from a representative of the Weinstein Company asking if we could pull this review of their film. They felt that the cut I saw at Sundance was incomplete and things in the review were unfair and did not reflect the final cut of the film. They asked if they could screen the film for me again, when it was 100%. Whether or not I saw a rough cut, the main complaints I have about the film are still reflected in every other negative review of the film (i.e., the video game motif, the wink-an-nod approach, the Spurlock-as-God approach to the material) and I doubt that the film would change that drastically between now and the release.

Rest assured, I'll be back when the film has been screened again for me and I'll revise my feelings of the picture if a change of heart is, indeed, warranted. Somehow I doubt it, but that's only fair.

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden is a film with an identity crisis. It doesn't know if it wants to be a comedy (at which it fails), it doesn't know if it wants to be a hard hitting informative piece that challenges stereotypes of the Middle East (at which it fails) and it doesn't know if it wants to be a shitty video game (at which is succeeds).

Morgan Spurlock made this film under three false assumptions and the film is damaged completely by it:

1. That he's funny.

2. No one knows anything about the "war on terror"

3. People think cheesy gimmicks make a good movie.

Each of these assumptions is false. Spurlock uses un-funny humor to try to prop up his point, but there are times that he betrays it completely. For example, the film actually works hard to dispel stereotypes about Muslims and Middle Eastern people as a whole. But he's quick to betray all of the work he's done in that regard with flippant remarks. A Muslim guy at one point asks Spurlock where his car asks and Spurlock responds, "Why? Do you want to blow it up?"

Sure, it might have been a clever thing to say, but reinforcing the same stereotypes you're trying to dispel is just bad for business and bad for the film as a whole.

Then each of the history lessons he uses in the film (set to really bad animation or rap music videos) are rehashes of information we've seen in pretty much every documentary about the war that's come out since Fahrenheit 9/11. The sort of people that are going to see this film aren't idiots and Spurlock just isn't respecting his audience.

And then, the cheesy gimmicks.

Jesus Christ.

From the CG Osama's breaking to "Can't Touch This" to the video game animation comparing Spurlock to Woody Allen and George Lucas, the film looks like it was designed by a 14 year-old. And then other stupid gimmicks, like looking up every bin Laden in the phone book in Saudi Arabia to laying in Artoo Detoo sounds over a conversation he "has" with a bomb-squad robot in Tel Aviv.

And then there's every single wink and a nod to Supersize Me that makes you want to vomit. This film seemed designed for hardcore fans of Supersize Me and I just don't think there are any. He's got sequences where Osama is flipping burgers and he has a sequence where he's at a McDonalds in Saudi Arabia. And then, at the end of the film, at the end of the "video game" he decides he needs a John McClane-style catch phrase when he beats video Osama and he says, honest to God, "Supersize this mother-fucker."

And he organizes the film around the idea (and this is what he says) "If I've learned anything from action movies, it's that one crazy guy can make a difference and take down the badguy before the credits roll."

But then he doesn't even try to look for Osama. And then, to justify it at the end, he says that finding Osama won't make a difference. He's probably right, but he filmed the movie as though he were working under the assumption that he knew he wouldn't find Osama, but cut the movie to make the audience think he might. Which just sets up needless expectations.

The biggest problem I had with this movie, though, was how good pieces of it were. When Spurlock took his medication and calmed down and asked real and interesting people hard hitting questions, it took balls. (Like the Imam that actually preaches the destruction of America and the Goatherders who talk about how he needs to pay his kids to keep them from joining the terrorists, etc.)

But there just isn't enough of that because Spurlock needed to cut all the meat to make way for the clutter.

That's why Spurlock needs a co-writer/producer that has the balls to tell him, "That's really fucking stupid, man."

Bryan Young blogs daily at This Divided State. Clips from his new film "Killer at Large" can be found here.

For more reviews from Sundance, click here.