MORGAN Spurlock's Super Size Me, in which the chirpy documentarian ate nothing but McDonald's food for a month, won its maker many friends, but even the most hard-line of vegans would have to admit that the premise wore a bit thin over 90 minutes, writes Donald Clarke.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?
Directed by Morgan Spurlock PG cert, lim release, 93 min **
Its successor, though charming and well-intended, is founded on even less sure ground.
What, exactly, is Morgan seeking to accomplish here? The title suggests that our hero has set out to track down the organising force behind the most extreme wing of militant Islam. In preparation, he receives instruction from various martial arts specialists, learns about the social habits of Arab nations, and gets a few shots from the same doctor who fretted so amusingly in Super Size Me.
These scenes and his meanderings throughout the Middle East are punctuated by passably amusing animations representing Morgan and Osama as characters in a video game. But Spurlock has, of course, something else in mind. Early on in the film we learn that his wife, a vegetarian chef, is about to give birth to their first child. The search for Bin Laden is really just an excuse to consider what sort of world Spurlock Minor is about to encounter.
The most fascinating sequences involve Morgan's encounters with more sinister sections of Middle Eastern society. He presents Saudi Arabia as soulless plutocracy in which school students are terrified even to discuss the state's attitude to Judaism. Earlier, in Israel, a group of unfriendly orthodox Jews chase his crew from their quarter.
But Morgan Spurlock is a nice guy and - while dining with friendly Palestinians or chatting with amiable Pakistanis - he works hard at forming the opinion that people are basically the same throughout the world and that life would be grand if we could all just get along with one another.
None of which is worth arguing with, but this is a message better suited to a Sunday school lesson than a documentary.
