Where Super Size Me had the sideshow allure of a man making himself sick with burgers while berating the bewildered corporation that makes them, Spurlock's latest crusade is lost from the start.
It seems some people weren’t suitably shocked when Morgan Spurlock told them that eating fast food is bad for them, so the thinking woman’s redneck is back again, this time to break the incredible news that the Middle East isn’t full of West-hating towel heads.
And guess what? It turns out they’re actually just like you and me, with their own families to love and their own political leaders to grumble about.
Where Super Size Me had the sideshow allure of a man making himself sick with burgers while berating the bewildered corporation that makes them, his latest crusade is lost from the start. Claiming to be concerned for the safety of his unborn child, Spurlock says he’s learned from the movies that danger is best tackled by a lone man, and so sets out to find Osama bin Laden.
What that actually means is that he grows a beard, moans about missing his wife and repeats the embarrassingly weak gag of asking Pakistanis, Afghans, Palestinians, Israelis and others if they know where the guy is.
There’s a good chance Spurlock’s facile clowning will help to cast Islam and the Middle East in a more human light, but his soft-spoken revelations are about as dumbed down as it’s possible to get. It’s genuinely difficult to know whether he’s more concerned with cheap jokes or his mission to record an everyman view of the Middle East, but the end of the film helpfully underlines what it’s really all about.
As we watch the footage of Morgan making it home safe and sound in time to climb in the tub and be there for his kid’s home birth, it’s abundantly clear that this conceited film is really all about him and his over-privileged, self-congratulatory existence.
If he’d found bin Laden we’d probably have heard about it.
Jaw-droppingly dumb.
The human race is doomed.
