Really Surprised!

As Good As It Gets

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Forget about Carmen Sandiego. What we really want to know is where in the world is Osama bin Laden? That's what Morgan Spurlock, the documentarian who brought us "Super Size Me," is determined to find out – and he's gone and made a whole movie on the subject. He wonders why, all these years after 9/11, the man who perpetrated that atrocity has yet to be found and brought to justice – even with a $25 million reward hanging over his head. So if the CIA and the FBI can't locate him, perhaps Spurlock himself can. And with a baby of his own on the way, Spurlock has a new-found reason for wanting the world to be a peaceful place. So off he goes on a tongue-in-cheek – but, at the same time, deadly serious - tour through some of the most dangerous places on Earth in search of the Most Wanted Man in the universe.So, after getting his inoculations, a little defense and survival training, some language lessons and tips on fashion, Spurlock is off and running on his journey.He makes stops in Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and, finally, Pakistan (where most experts believe bin Laden is hiding out, if, indeed, he's alive at all) and, in each of those places, he discovers that people are just people, regardless of their religious and sectarian differences, and that the vast majority of them want pretty much the same thing: to earn a decent living, to provide for their families, and to see their children grow up in a world where people are free to live at peace with one another.Not that he doesn't encounter individuals who express support for bin Laden and al Queda and sympathize with their causes - just that such people appear to be in the minority, even in that part of the world.Spurlock is unsparing in his criticism of America for propping up dictators in these areas and for funding their brutal regimes, thereby providing a fertile breeding ground for present and future terrorists. But he also takes swipes at the radical Muslims themselves, who, through their extremist, blood-soaked actions, do all they can to give Islam a bad name. Perhaps, the most fascinating leg of the tour occurs in Saudi Arabia, where even Spurlock is shocked by what he sees: a country where church and state are truly one, where there is no freedom of speech or the press, and where religious moderates are as rare as a bin Laden sighting in a local strip joint. This leads to the most bizarrely incongruous and darkly amusing image in the film: that of an opulent, state-of-the-art mall swarming with women shoppers covered from head to toe in black burkas.While Spurlock is dead serious in his intentions, his tone in "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?" is refreshingly light-hearted and gleefully ironic. He even finds humor in exploring the caves of Tora Bora, where, it is believed, bin Laden planned out the 9/11 attacks and where he was last seen. Spurlock also uses animation and simulated video game imagery to enliven the tone.It doesn't require a spoiler alert to report that Spurlock is ultimately unsuccessful in finding bin Laden – if that indeed was his actual goal. But if his intention was a broader one – namely, providing an amazingly comprehensive survey of attitudes in the Muslim world and to show that we are all in this fight together - he has achieved it ten times over.

This movie is a must see for everyone. I expected a comedy which it was in many instances but it was mostly educational with lots of questions and answers that everyday people would ask of everyday people in these Middle Eastern countries. I like the narrative that Morgan used and his easy way put most people at ease, since he obviously was American and I'm sure many people may not have trusted him immediately. Seeing him go to many different countries was also interesting, watching those who would not speak to him at all, even being rude with yelling and shoving, which truly surprised me since he was so earnest and open and very accepting. That was in Israel and that made me feel sad and concerned by the fact that we cannot find peace or understanding if we cannot even talk and ask questions of each other. The movie made me feel like I was traveling with Morgan and interacting with the local people so I very much enjoyed this. I wish every American would see this movie since Muslim people have been so demonized by our government when all they really want is what we want also. I liked this movie so much that I just bought it after seeing the rental.

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.

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?