Evidently it ain't like "The Emperors New Groove"

'Apocalypto' Is More 'Mad Max' Than Mayan
Fox News
With the subtlety of several thousand flying mallets and arrows, here comes Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," a two hour plus torture-fest so violent that women and children will be headed to the doors faster than you can say "duck" when the film opens on Dec. 8th.

"Apocalypto" surpasses "The Passion" in every way as a movie about pain, flagellation and wounding. The grotesqueries are almost numbing, and at some point they become laughable. But all the while, you're thinking, what's the point here? If "Apocalypto" was supposed to be about that transitional civilization, where is it? After two hours and several minutes of squirming and covering eyes, you start to think that "Apocalypto" exists just to show violence for itself. The point is lost.

Torture-fest, pain, grotesqueries: ergo, your going to be reading about families going to this movie with 5-10 year old kids in tow. I did bring my son to see the Lord of the Ring movies, and there were some pretty graphic violent scenes there. I did not bring my daughter, because she is alot more sensitive to those images, and even at home, we have her cover her eyes or leave whenever the violent parts come on.

The same goes even watching TV at home. One of our biggest peeves with tv is that we can be watching some fun show that we all love---like Monk---and a commercial will come on that shows gratuitous sex, violence or occultic scenes; we end up scrambling for the remote and/or have the kids cover their eyes.

We can't stop them from seeing all the violence and other garbage that goes on in movies and TV; but by golly we're going to stop as much as we can. When they do see it, we try and put everything in context and use it as teaching moments as much as we can.

This obviously sounds like a movie we'll definitely pass on. I wonder about those parents that will knowingly bring small children to see this kind of movie, and you know as well as I that it is going to happen.