Mel Gibson is just a no good guy.

I saw Apocalypto last night and there's something I don't understand. How is a film that consists solely of cardboard-thin characters being forced through a series of cliches getting such good reviews?

There's about 15 minutes of character development near the beginning of the film. Clever dialog, good characters and all that jazz. The rest of the film, however, is these said characters being tediously forced to move around in pure silence. The most likable character just disappears for nearly an hour. The first few minutes of the film doesn't provide us enough reason to care about these characters through the rest of the film. It just doesn't.

Also, the violence in the film moves quickly from shocking and grisly to humorous and unnecessary. Audience members were laughing more then gasping at, what should have been, a wanton display. Mel doesn't let up through the entire film, adding more and more unnecessary scenes of gore. By then end you hardly care about the characters since the film has already established that they are all disposable. Not to mention the fact that after 2 hours of watching gruesome acts you are so desensitized that nothing else they throw at you could possible shock or upset you.

How someone could sit down and write some of the scenes is beyond me. Scenes so improbable and over the top that Mel Blanc would blush. I have an indelible vision of Farhad Safinia wandering into the room and asking Mel Gibson "What's the worst thing that could happen to a woman in a well?" Mel Gibson thinks for a while and thoughtfully replies: "Childbirth, of course." I'm not joking here, folks.

Lastly, there is the incredable series of cliches the characters must endure. It's hardly worth mentioning here but I'll give you these three: Hero trapped in quicksand, Child trapped in well, Hero gets saved from becoming a human sacrifice by solar eclipse.

It seems to me that Mel Gibson has now produced two consecutive films that are nothing more the an expose of human suffering. Not as an artful display, or to make some kind of statement, but displays of suffering for pure entertainment. And that's why I think Mel is a no good guy.