Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

cl777 Although the title makes it sound like it will be interesting and it is directed and written by Morgan Spurlock from Super Size Me which was a very engaging, original film, Where in the World is neither of those.It follows Morgan as he travels to the Middle East in search of- you guessed it- Osama Bin Laden. The movie takes you through many interviews with locals of Egypt, Israel, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and more. He asks them about their feelings towards America, and of course whether they know where OBL (as he calls him) is. None of these interviews yield any substantial, insightful or noteworthy remarks. The movie simply drags on and Morgan's mock quest seems pointless even for us to watch.The movie is overly gimmicky and my impression was that it tried much too hard to do something that had already been done before. Certain parts reminded me of Bill Maher's Religulous which I thoroughly enjoyed and actually saw 3 times. Similarly, Spurlock inserts some comedic elements into his scenes, a few of which I have to admit are funny. For instance he shows a page in Osama's diary which reads: 1. Clean Cave (this one is crossed out and done), 2. Kill all Infidels etc.; and on another page "I hate America", "I am bored today". This was the only moment where I actually laughed.The big difference is that Religulous posed real questions and was much more historical, analytical and instructive. If you're looking for a film where the director already has his answers before he sets upon his search, Fahrenheit 9/11 or Capitalism: A Love Story (which I will be reviewing soon) are much stronger candidates. Fabio said "it is like a bad Michael Moore" and that pretty much sums it up.Fabio's rating: 5 Mine: 3 Read more reviews at: http://paulinasmovies.blogspot.com

davideo-2 STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Morgan Spurlock (remember, the guy who ate all the food on the McDonald's menu?) suddenly learns that his girlfriend is pregnant with his first child and, amongst all the other emotions that must be running around in his head, he thinks: I've got to make this world a safer place for her to grow up in and, since the CIA and the American Special Forces, with all their technology and man-power, haven't managed to do it, I will achieve said safer world by hunting down and claiming the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. His hunt takes him from Egypt, to Morrocco, to the East Bank in Palestine, to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tora Bora in Afghanistan, and Pakistan, interviewing possible leads along the way, interviewing key religious figures on each side of the religious war as well as hearing from everyday people in these war torn, repressed countries their views views on Americans around the world and their foreign policy.So Spurlock, the man probably best remembered for 'the McDonalds experiment' film Super Size Me in 2004, has a sudden need to find the number one terror link in the world to make the world safer for his newborn child? Only he will know if this is really true or if he just wanted some more attention in the film world after SSM four years ago, which this didn't get half the exposure of. And quite rightly, for, although an interesting piece of food for thought, WITWIOBL? doesn't leave quite the same impact as his hamburger odyssey (although the motivations behind it are arguably much more important.) The film starts by noting the most glaring, niggling fact that the Americans, with the most sophisticated, advanced technology in the world, have spent nearly ten years looking, without success, for a man hiding in a cave. Given his health was reputedly failing when the hunt for him began, and with the above fact in mind, I would draw the conclusion that Bin Laden is almost certainly dead now. I would also summarise that the president and the military chiefs of America are aware of this. If you're of the viewpoint that they deny it to keep the war effort going, that's what you think, but Spurlock obviously feels there is some point to his new film, so that's why he made it.It's easy to compare the guy to another famous modern documentarian, Michael Moore, with his use of humour to accentuate serious subject matter. The opening skit, involving dancing bin Laden's, is proof of this. But, also like Moore, he has a tendency to be one sided, obviously trying to plug his opinion in some way rather than showing a balanced argument from both sides. Here, Spurlock actually seems less interested in hunting for bin Laden than plugging the message to the world that' we only hate muslims because of what the American media show us, most of them are really decent, ordinary people like you and me.' While this is undoubtedly true, it detracts from the point of the film and is pretty obvious. Even when he visits Saudi Arabia (where church and state are unseperated), we see only young muslims reacting to what they are being taught, most obviously when he interviews two young students in a classroom and is forced to stop the interview when he asks them their feelings about Israelis. In fact, it says a lot that these are the people he receives the most hostile reaction from, encountering aggression when visiting an area where a sign asks (commands) male passers by not to go through their area in 'immodest dress', showing it's not just muslims who haven't got rid of out-dated ideas in the modern world and who adhere too tightly to dress codes.Spurlock ditched his original idea (probably knowing he was really on a wild goose chase) and instead spends most of his film trying to plug his left wing ideologies to the audience. It casts an interesting light on facts surrounding the hunt for Osama and the religious conflicts that still go on in the world, but the 'muslims are just like us' vibe sends it all off course from what it was really trying to do. ***

DICK STEEL If this movie knows where he is, there'll be international headlines made, and the filmmakers will get that US$25 million (or more?) bounty that is placed on his head. Of course it will be silly to presume that this film can find the answers to the multi-million dollar question, or even come close to it, so just what was the intention?Morgan Spurlock isn't new to controversy, having burst onto the documentary scene with his real life gorging on MacDonald's for every meal in order to drive home the point that junk food really does junk your well being. So for this new film of his, it stems from his desire to seek out the world's #1 wanted man, and ask him just what floats his boat. He may be putting on his jester cap with his somewhat hilarious introduction, but looking at the preparation with vaccination and even attending some terrorism survival course, he's quite dead set in his mission to find that elusive man.Until of course you realize that he's hitting all the relative safe havens for the most part, before venturing into the more likely places in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But what he seeks to unearth is the Middle East's attitudes towards Americans, and it seems that the common consensus is that while they have nothing against the people, almost everyone that Spurlock chose to showcase, has issues with the foreign policies. And from interviews with the average Joes, they sure have issues with politics at home more than those that are from abroad. Spurlock also takes opportunity to slam the US foreign policy, and does so through a hilarious animated sequence involving Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty herself, in what would be a realistic case of sleeping with the wrong bedfellows.Bringing the camera from Morocco to Saudi Arabia, and interview people from both the state of Palestine and Israel, what he had presented were compelling arguments for and against, as well as plenty of moderate views that seek to debunk the bulk of western media who find delight in demonizing those in the Middle East. Through the looking glass peering at their everyday lives, the film comes to present the basic need for survival and providing for one's family, no matter one's geography, country, religion and culture. Naturally there were some feathers ruffled, especially when dealing with closed cultures who clam up, or intolerant folks who have no qualms in using violence, but in general, this documentary serves to be rather tame.Yes it's gimmicky in its title, and half the time you're not sure whether MXXSpulock will take that plunge and really head to where he will likely find some inkling of positive leads, but what it had presented instead, is something more powerful that this world really needs to reach out and have everyone taking a more tolerant attitude and to understand one another a lot more, to avoid conflict. This should be a world without strangers, and the documentary managed to show just a glimmer of that hope.

movedout When Albert Brooks tried to reconfigure a massive cultural chasm into chuckles in the meta-comic "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World", he admitted markedly failure in finding common ground – Americans weren't ready to laugh, but more importantly, Muslims weren't ready. This was way back in 2005 when the War on Terror still had that new car smell. Now, Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me" fame follows Brooks' muddled footsteps into oblivion as he looks for cheap stunts in the Muslim world. Not for any sort of truth or insight, but vulgar shtick. To call this a documentary or even a docu-comedy would seem fallacious to the standings of both genres.Spurlock just isn't as interesting or humorous a personality as he assumes himself to be, which only serves to antagonise the idea of its premise being an odyssey into the treacherous abyss to find the world's most wanted man with only Spurlock as tour guide. He frames this sudden epiphany of a "dangerous post-9/11 world" with his wife getting pregnant. It's a faux-earnest set-up – interspersed with ridiculous allusions to his impending fatherhood and his superfluous wife's presence in the film when it cuts away back home – that becomes increasingly embarrassing as the film wears on, especially when it starts to become an excuse for Spurlock's failures and insecurities over his ill-conceived mission.Approaching this staged existential quandary from a place of blissful ignorance towards the Muslim world, Spurlock feigns mock surprise at how different the Muslim population is compared to America's perception of it was – they aren't all violent terrorists! Cut to Spurlock's histrionic astonishment over that nugget of information. And just as how easily he made his mock-realisation that a constant stream of fast food led to a death wish seem almost a quaint discovery, Spurlock leads the audience to think that he's doing some bold investigative work here by superficially interviewing the hoi polloi of the Gaza Strip and so-called relatives of Osama Bin Laden in Egypt. He makes his unexpected ejection from an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood in Israel become his glib counterpoint to the idea that Muslims aren't bad eggs, but that Middle Eastern religiosity is just plain screwy and insular.Spurlock frequently pollutes his geographical opportunity into pure performance. He makes a dog and pony show about the sociopolitical strife in the region when he obviously knows better. His rehearsed, pandered surprise at the world outside of Manhattan shows a man who doesn't think squat of his audience's own comprehensions on the Middle East since 9/11 and his film ends up becoming just as shallow as his phony-baloney egoist brand of "documentaries".And only Spurlock seems equipped to turn his cultural ignorance into cultural arrogance – completing his transformation into a boorish man-with-a-camera into a Michael Moore-ish buffoon oblivious to his own chicanery. He insincerely coheres his film into a single, predictably trivial idea that these Middle-Easterners are just like us – from their love of family to their ultimate pursuit of peace on their land. Except Spurlock doesn't really believe that. To him, they are like us but they aren't really. His entire self-centred view of the Middle East engenders the film as a wholly facetious work of manipulation and even more egregiously, is ultimately condescending to the very subjects Spurlock explicitly extols at the end of his film.Perhaps we get the real glimpse of Spurlock as a person when he deigns to ask a jocular Egyptian man whether he was about to blow up his car or when he dons distinctively Arabic garb and starts randomly assaulting Saudi Arabian women in the mall about Bin Laden's whereabouts. It is a particularly contemptible redneck hustle that only reveals Morgan Spurlock as the sort of Ugly American that his Middle Eastern interviewees denounce as the true cause of their cultural discordance. Who can blame them?