Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

Not that he can resist digging into his Michael Moore-size bag of tricks and shticks. Animated interludes on American support for dictatorships work better than the videogame-style sequences where Spurlock's computer-generated avatar fights bin Laden's(!). But his man-in-the-Arab-street sequences truly stand out, such as when a Moroccan father expresses his hopes for his sons' future, or when Spurlock asks a group of Palestinians for their take on the region's problems and a youth cries out, "I wish we had someone like Osama bin Laden!"

The film's early detractors have complained that six years after 9/11, they already know the facts at hand. But Spurlock didn't make this film for npr listeners or Atlantic subscribers, but rather those Americans who've never seen a Muslim speak about his longing for human rights, or thought about the link between their local gas station and jihadism. Where in the World... isn't the smoothest or most serious of the recent war-on-terror documentaries, but it has the best chance of doing more than just preaching to the converted.