Osama bin Laden documentary focuses on film's director instead

"Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?" finds brand-name documentarian Morgan Spurlock looking for the world's top terrorist, and finding himself.

This, we realize to our mounting impatience, was always the goal of this self-serving movie (also a companion book), a documentary just as childish as the title suggests.

Spurlock is the likable West Virginian who made a deserved splash with "Super-Size Me," documenting how a steady diet of fast food turned him into a bloated health mess in just a few months.

There are alarming signs in "Osama," though, that his favorite dish is Spurlock, and that a steady diet of Morgan has adversely affected his capacity for sound judgment and critical thinking.

And, so, instead of an interview with Osama, we get ain't-that-cute footage of Spurlock in Arab get-up astride a camel, trotting in front of the great pyramids in a farcical search for the 9/11 mastermind.

In truth, the movie is meant to be a journey of cultural discovery - he powwows with Arabs, Israelis, Muslims, Jews, folks of all tribes and sects. Spurlock makes some "stunning" discoveries - turns out there is tension between Israel and the Arab states. Likewise, we learn that America is deeply unpopular in many parts of the Middle East.

Anyone who's ever picked up a newspaper or watched the evening news will be bored by it, or insulted by the notion that Spurlock thinks his insights are noteworthy (the phrase "No S---, Spurlock" kept going through my mind).

Still, the film is not completely worthless - Spurlock does a fair amount of man-in-the-street stuff, and he goes off the beaten path to get some unfiltered (if unscientific) opinion in the so-called Arab street regarding bin Laden, whose popularity has plummeted, at least among the people interviewed here.

It all begs a question, though - what does Spurlock's constant, hovering, desperately clowning presence add to this reportage?

Well, nothing. It's distracting, until the moment when it's completely narcissistic - the search for bin Laden leads not to Pakistan but to Spurlock's house, where we see his wife give birth to their first child, in a warm tub of water.

Given what we could have seen, I was relieved, at last, to find the focus squarely on Spurlock. *

Produced by Jeremy Chilnick, directed by Morgan Spurlock, written by Morgan Spurlock, Jeremy Chilnick, distributed by The Weinstein Co.