I'll be blunt. Scotland, PA should stink. But it doesn't. But I'm not sure why it doesn't, since the reasons it should stink are pretty apparent. Hence I'm going to activate my Wonder Twin power and review this as an octopus. Because it seems to me that the appeal of the movie, and it is appealing, resides firmly on the Other Hand.

Reason Number One This Movie Should Stink:
The Way it Modernizes Shakespeare is Basically Selfish.
Scotland, PA (which debuted at the 2001 Sundance Festival, received a limited release last year, and is now available on DVD) is the Bard's Macbeth reset in the 1970's fast food industry. Quite possibly the whole thing was "conceptualized" while staring intently at a lava lamp in lieu of reading tomorrow's English assignment.

"Hey, did you ever notice that 'Macbeth' and 'McDonald's' begin with the same syllable?"

"That's awesome! You should totally write a screenplay."

For much of its running time, Scotland, PA uses Shakespeare as an excuse (not to mention a marketing ploy) for some tired goofing on the 1970's, or the fast food industry, or in an easy target two-fer, both at the same time. Duncan gets killed, wait for it... in a Fryalator! And one of his sons is gay. How can we tell? He invites a bunch of his smooth-cheeked chums over for a Godspell sing-along. Ho frickety ho. The movie doesn't bother using Shakespeare's words, and huge chunks of it have very little to do with Shakespeare's play. Why drag the poor dead guy into it when you don't really want or need him? In other words, the movie comes perilously close to a pointless-and-selfish sort of update.

On the Other Hand:
The Way it Modernizes Shakespeare is At Times Unexpectedly Inspired.

I enjoy most of Shakespeare's tragedies, but Macbeth usually doesn't sing to me. I just don't have much sense of the characters outside of their ambition, and their ambition has always seemed blandly gratuitous. Of course, ambition always threatens to exist for its own sake, rather than as a motor toward a particular goal. But the play never makes me care about how you get from moving-up ambitious to slaughter-Banquo's-children ambitious.

Oddly enough, Scotland, PA makes me care about exactly that change. When you're talking about a newly titled, successful general, ambition seems like an affectation, the mean ennui of "too much is never enough." When you're talking about an assistant manager at a local fast food chain, ambition's essential and desperate. Do you want to bag takeout the rest of your life? And the need to escape that possibility makes you hang on to ambition even as it changes you, even as you suffer for it. James LeGros, who plays MacBeth, is someone we recognize and even sympathize with before the murder. But what he becomes in the wake of the crime is frightening and genuinely tragic. As wound up as this movie is in its own thin conceit, it manages to render the play's major theme both vital and poignant.

Reason Number Two This Movie Should Stink:
It has Andy Dick and Maura Tierney.
The NewsRadio reunion isn't accidental. Tierney's the wife of first-time director Bill Morrissette, and I wouldn't be surprised if Andy Dick just happened to be sleeping on their couch when shooting began. He's one of the stoners who stands in for the witches. The witches and their prophecies are what I've always liked about the play, so let's just say I was underwhelmed by the substitution. Maura Tierney's not such a train wreck as her former cohort, but she has her limitations. Scattagoric writer Missie has suggested that she's a poor person's Linda Fiorentino, which sheds a helpful light on the problem. Tierney's okay here, though a little whiny where she needs to be menacing, and a little clingy where she needs to be more coolly seductive. In other words, if this were a straight-on adaptation of the play, she'd need to be more like, well, Linda Fiorentino. (Incidentally, doesn't a version of Macbeth with Fiorentino as the female lead just have to happen? I'd even be willing to sacrifice my usual exorbitant fee and take the title role gratis, such a high-minded patron of the arts am I.)

On the Other Hand:
It has Maura Tierney and Christopher Walken.
This isn't a straight-on adaptation, and, in a rare feat, Tierney convinces us that Lady Macbeth carries the milk of human kindness in something other than the carton of her own guilty conscience. (The carton says "Have you seen these pretty ones?" on the side.) When her husband freaks out and sees the ghost of Banquo at a very public event, Tierney's Lady Mac apologizes for the scene in a way that makes us think she's worried about her husband as much as the exposure of their scheme. She loves him, and not just them, the Matrimonial Homicidal Tag-Team. So it's all the more wounding, as it seldom is in other adaptations of the play, when he shuts her out in his struggle with his guilt.

Christopher Walken's Macduff here, but instead of a grizzled, vengeful mercenary, he's the police inspector investigating Duncan's murder. He provides the comedy in the film that actually works. Lay on, Columbo. But you never quite forget that he's trouble, too. He doesn't beat you over the head with the insinuation. He doesn't have to; he's Christopher Walken.

Reason Number Three This Movie Should Stink:
It Begins and Ends Weakly.
The first half-hour is tedious, trying way too hard to be funny. If Andy Dick is a letdown as one of the weird sisters, then the unapologetic apologetic throw-in for the advance of Birnam Wood is a side-trip onto Springfield's escalator to nowhere.

On the Other Hand:
Wow, that Middle.
It's hard to explain why a suspenseful, understated third of the film hangs with you longer than the obvious, ham-handed first and final thirds do. But it does, partly due to the sudden maturity of the performances, partly due to the film just getting out of its own way and telling a story about characters we've inadvertently come to care about.

I've gone to the other hand three times now, which leaves me two tentacles to drift in the current. These extra appendages might be shrugging, although I'm not sure that, as an octopus, I have shoulders. So what the heck, give Scotland, PA the benefit of the doubt and assume that I'm giving it five out of eight tentacles up. If you're renting this to pass an exam instead of reading the play, you're screwed. If not, you'll probably be mildly amused and/or pleasantly surprised.