Call me mean-spirited, but I’m glad Mel Gibson’s latest production effort, Paparazzi, was a relative flop with $7.8 million in its opening.

I’d like to think that audiences just knew a stinker when they saw one. More likely, the average schlub probably just couldn’t figure out what the word “paparazzi” meant, and so was scared off.

This isn’t any backlash over The Passion of the Christ, which I considered to be a gutsy bet for Gibson (and an ultimately winning one, both critically and financially — nice when that happens). But Paparazzi is such an obvious celebrity wet dream brought to life, it’s embarassing to see it on film.

Related to this: I think it’s safe to officially declare the once-promising Robin Tunney to be box-office poison. Her string of flops and obscurities since her modest success in 1996’s The Craft speaks for itself.