Summaries

In a modernized retelling of "MacBeth" set in 1970s suburban Pennsylvania, Joe McBeth, an unambitious hamburger stand employee, is driven to success by his scheming wife.

Joe McBeth is a hard-working but unambitious doofus who toils at a hamburger stand alongside his wife Pat, who has a significant edge in the brains department. Pat is convinced that she could do a lot better with the place than their boss Norm Duncan is doing, so she works up a plan to usurp Norm and convinces Mac to rob the restaurant's safe and murder Norm, using the robbery to throw the police off their trail. Though two stoners and a would-be fortune teller warn Mac that bad luck awaits him, he gathers his courage and goes through with his wife's scheme. At first, things seem to have gone just as Pat hoped, and after Norm's sons sell the restaurant to the McBeths (they pay for it with the money they stole from Norm), business takes off. But vegetarian police detective McDuff is convinced that there's foul play at the new center of the fast food universe, and when the McBeths fear that fry cook Banko knows more than he's telling, Mac takes charge of plotting and decides that more dead meat could be on the menu.—Anonymous

Details

Keywords
  • husband wife relationship
  • implied sex
  • amusement park
  • father son estrangement
  • restaurant owner
Genres
  • Comedy
  • Crime
Release date Jan 21, 2001
Motion Picture Rating (MPA) R
Countries of origin United States Canada
Language English
Filming locations Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Production companies Abandon Pictures Paddy Wagon Productions Veto Chip Productions

Box office

Gross US & Canada $384098
Opening weekend US & Canada $43366
Gross worldwide $384098

Tech specs

Runtime 1h 44m
Color Color
Sound mix Dolby Digital
Aspect ratio 1.85 : 1

Synopsis

Thinly veiled retro-modern version of Shakespeare's MACBETH. It takes place at a burger diner, in a small Pennsylvania town. Complete with fore-shadowing soothsayers, weirdly campy acting and pace, even a nineteen-seventies' self-awareness cornucopia. A black-comedy of errors, some trailer park trash, kill their boss and steal not only his money but also his idea to have a drive-thru window installed. After they get the money, they then buy the 'doomed' restaurant, from the owner's sons that don't really want any part of it.A nosy vegetarian sheriff, then begins hanging around...as first a homeless man, whom the couple had framed, can't be pinned with the crime, and the older brother is suspected. The couple squirms as the damning evidence stacks up against the older son who had a 'sucky' relationship with his father, and no alibi.

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