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'Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?'

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BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

April 18, 2008

Morgan Spurlock's 2004 exposé of the fast-food industry, "Super Size Me," was a smart, funny, imaginative documentary that marked a turning point in the form. Along with Michael Moore, Spurlock ushered in the age of the documentarian as personality.

Spurlock has a regular-guy persona, which lends so much potential to his new film, "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?" You can imagine him asking the questions we all want answered: Why can't we find this guy? Why are we still in Iraq? How did we arrive at this worrisome point in history?

Instead, Spurlock butts into the national conversation like a morning radio host, angling for cheap laughs and a chance to raise his profile. (The book version of the film came out this week.) Gallivanting the globe like a college kid on his year abroad, Spurlock swaggers around in a flak jacket, gawks at foreign cultures and cracks himself up by donning traditional Saudi Arabian dress. His funny-finding expeditions mostly consist of stopping strangers to ask about bin Laden. At one point, he peers into a Tora Bora cave, yodeling, "Yoo-hoo, Osama!"

It won't spoil anything to reveal that Spurlock doesn't find his man, but his failure to do so - even though it's played for laughs - is a cowardly cop-out that unintentionally mocks the very real dangers of life in the Middle East.

(1 STAR) WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN? (PG-13). Fast-food fighter Morgan Spurlock trains his sights on the world's most wanted terrorist. 1:30 (adult themes, brief profanity). At area theaters.