Super-Size Budget Can’t Hide ‘Difficult Second Film’ Syndrome

By Nicholas Barber

Film 2

Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? Morgan Spurlock 93 MINS, 12A

Doomsday Neil Marshall 108 MINS, 18

What Happens in Vegas Tom Vaughan 98 MINS, 12A

Morgan Spurlock’s hit documentary Super Size Me made up for its nickel-and-dime budget by having a million-dollar concept: what would happen if the director ate nothing but McDonald’s burgers and fries for a month? But Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? is a classic “difficult second album”. The film has a much bigger budget this time round, hence all the international travel and expensive- looking animation, but the concept, much like Spurlock at the end of Super Size Me, is weaker and flabbier. He starts by declaring that his wife is pregnant, and that he therefore wants to make the world a safer place for his unborn child. His plan: he’ll catch the leader of al-Qa’ida.

It’s all a bit spurious. If Spurlock genuinely hopes to unearth new information about Bin Laden’s location – and that wouldn’t be beyond some documentary-makers – then what’s he doing on a camel in Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, interviewing passing locals? If, on the other hand, he just wants to learn about Islamic attitudes to the US, then why does he keep stressing how vital it is to complete his mission before the deadline of fatherhood?

The film is an engaging introduction to American foreign policy in the Middle East, with a jovial, politically savvy host. But the soppy phone calls between Spurlock and his wife are a tiresome gimmick. And not many IoS readers will be rocked by the conclusion that, hey, some Muslims don’t want to take over the world, after all.

Doomsday is another over-ambitious follow-up to a low-budget smash. Neil Marshall’s pot-holing horror thriller The Descent was feted for its claustrophobic setting and tightly focused premise, but his sprawling new film goes as far as possible in the opposite direction. It begins in the present day, with the outbreak of a viral epidemic in Scotland which leads to the whole country being quarantined behind a bullet-proof Hadrian’s Wall. Thirty years on, the authorities learn that a scientist (Malcolm McDowell) may have developed a vaccine north of the border, so they send their top agent (Rhona Mitra) to find him. She and her team set off in an armoured car and quickly discover that Glasgow is now populated by bloodthirsty ravers sporting Mohicans and face paint.

Doomsday is Marshall’s tribute to his favourite 1980s sci-fi action movies. There’s not much left over when you mentally edit out all the pinchings from The Terminator, Alien, Escape from New York and the Mad Max franchise – and Marshall even gets back to the Eighties by sticking Fine Young Cannibals and Frankie Goes to Hollywood on the soundtrack. If you were feeling generous you’d call it a parody, which might excuse the wooden acting, naff dialogue and logic-free plotting, but I was definitely laughing at it more than I was laughing with it. I can accept a wimpy virus which leaves hundreds of hale and hearty survivors. And I’m OK with people eating human flesh even though there are herds of cattle roaming around. But the notion that Scotland still hasn’t exhausted its Tennents Lager reserves after three post-apocalyptic decades – that’s just getting silly.

Don’t waste your time with all the preposterous contrivances that open What Happens in Vegas, but the upshot is that two young, single New Yorkers are forced – by a judge’s ruling, believe it or not – to share a spacious apartment for six months, at the end of which they’ll be awarded $1.5m each.

So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that they’re both insanely obnoxious, and so they devote their every waking moment to ruining each other’s lives (before they fall in love, of course). Supposedly the fact that these two morons are played by Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher is meant to be enough to make viewers long for a happy ending, as opposed to a double suicide.

(c) 2008 Independent on Sunday, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.