I have to admit that when my husband told me the movie he rented for us was a retelling of MacBeth that took place in a Pennsylvania fast food restaurant, I was skeptical. It sounded like one of those movies that would be best watched while doing something else. So I sat down with him,
Scotland, PA., the latest delivery of Christmas catalogues, and prepared to give it only half my attention.

I was pleasantly surprised. The catalogues fell by the wayside as the movie proved itself to be an able parody of the Macbeth story. Who would have known that Macbeth could work so well in such an unlikely situation? But then, that's why Shakespeare's work has lasted as long as it has - the themes are so universal that they work just as well in the meanest of settings just as they do among exalted royalty.

In this case, the setting is a small Pennsylvania town in the early 1970's. The characters, employees of a mom and pop hamburger joint owned by the Duncan's. McBeth (James Le Gros) is an amiable, easily led short-order cook, whose main interest in life seems to be having sex with his wife and drinking. His wife (Maura Tierney) is a disgruntled waitress at the same restaurant who chafes at the servile role her job demands. All of the characters from Macbeth are there - Banko the friend and initial co-conspirator, McDuff (Christopher Walken), the avenger of Duncan (James Rebhorn), and in the funniest twist, the three witches who have been transformed into three mystical hippies (Andy Dick, Amy Smart, and Timothy Levitch.)

The hippies always seem to be a figment of McBeth's imagination, (he only encounters them when drunk) but they set him on his fateful course by reading his fortune in a Magic Eight Ball. Instead of living in a spooky, misty forest, they inhabit an abandoned amusement park. They plant the seed of a revolutionary idea for the hamburger joint - a drive-through window like those found in banks. When his fellow short-order cook, Banko, tells him that their current manager has been stealing from the restaurant, McBeth, at his wife's urging, turns his boss in. His hopes for replacing him, however, are dashed when the younger Duncans are put to work at the restaurant instead. This, even though McBeth has shared his idea of the drive-thru with Duncan, and even though he's proved his mettle and loyalty by breaking up a food fight in the restaurant. Mrs. McBeth, in true Lady Macbeth fashion, spurs her easily-influenced husband on to greater things and before you know it, Duncan is dead, a victim of the deep-frier, the Duncan sons sell the business to McBeth, and the McBeths become successful fast-food entrepeneurs, complete with a Camaro and split-level house. Guilt, however, follows them everywhere. Mrs. McBeth is obsessed with a phantom grease burn that she got when doing in Duncan, and McBeth himself is increasingly haunted by the hippies, his guilt, and all those he has had to eliminate to protect his wife and himself from the truth. Both Le Gros and Tierney do an excellent job of portraying two people becoming increasingly unhinged.