Madcap Magoo

The title of this short is a play on the title of the feature film Destination Moon (which itself has an animated sequence made by Walter Lantz and starring Woody Woodpecker) and once again Magoo and his myopia take an adventure, hand in hand, off to the "Moon". The life that man leads!

Magoo has been enlisted as the male lead in Mrs. Sticknee's vanity production opera. On his way to the stage, he winds up in the rafters and causes havoc, cutting the various lines, standing in front of a spotlight, falling down stairs and trying to enter through a trap door the diva is standing on, and eventually crashing into a control board, triggering a snowstorm.

The near-sighted, and obviously rich, Mr. MaGoo and his nephew, Waldo, set sail on their well-rigged boat to catch Mighty Moe, the elusive giant marlin. Walso falls overboard and Magoo rescues a seal by mistake. Thinking he is giving brandy to Waldo, Magoo serves the seal with cod-liver oil, making the seal very happy. MaGoon ties the cod-liver oil to the anchor, sinks it and promptly catches Mighty Moe. He then sails for port with his prize catch, leaving Waldo, at sea, hanging onto a buoy.

Mr. Magoo and Waldo are on a cruise aboard an ocean liner when the near-sighted MaGoo accidentally falls into the ship's swimming pool and thinks he has fallen overboard. When he tries to rescue one of the swimmers, the ship's captain jumps in and rescues Magoo. The grateful---and talkative---MaGoo informs the ship's captain that he will inform the ship's captain of his good deed and, when last seen, MaGoo is heading in the direction of the swimming pool.

Magoo goes golfing in an unbearable way. When Magoo and Waldo go to play golf, they wind up in the middle of a bear hunt. Magoo mistakes a grizzly bear for Waldo and proceeds to make the bear caddy for him. The bear continually gets clobbered by clubs, balls, you name it. Meanwhile, Waldo is nowhere to be found, and the hunters are closing in. Just as Magoo is playing the last hole, the hunters open fire (seeing the bear), and everyone runs away: Magoo, the bear and Waldo.

This UPA cartoon introduces a new character, Pete Hothead, a feisty little man with a violent temper. Pete Hothead was featured in only one other cartoon. In this one he receives a parrot from a store rather than the radio he ordered. In his attempts to exchange the parrot for a radio, he cause much havoc, disruptions and chaos in the store. He finally gets his radio, but then decides he'd rather have a television set.

At a used car lot, Mr. Magoo is intent on buying a car for his nephew Waldo. He is slick talked into buying an old clunker thanks to a shifty salesman but he drives it off anyway. Unfortunately, the myopic Magoo drives off a pier and under the ocean where he mistakes the various aquatic surroundings such as fish, sunken boats, and seals for other cars, dilapidated mansions, and a horn happy driver respectively.

There is a sculpture contest with large prize money for the winner, and Mr. Magoo decides to become a sculptor and do some sculpturing. He borrows a friend's studio and goes to work on his creation. When a police-pursued jewel thief enter the studio, he convinces the near-sighted Magoo that he is a beautiful model, and Magoo, happy to have a beautiful woman as his model, sculpts away. The police finally arrive, and Magoo gets a reward for the thief's capture, and his sculpture wins the first-place prize money in the sculpture contest.

Mr. Magoo misreads a newspaper flyer thinking it is a letter from his power company saying they are shutting off his power. Outraged, Magoo heads for the power company intent on giving them a piece of his mind. However, instead of going to the power company, he goes to a newspaper printing officer by mistake getting tangled up in the machinery all the while thinking he is being given "the bum's rush". He returns to his house with the power back on thinking he has won. But the next day, he doesn't like the paper's editorial and heads to the newspaper office wanting to give them a piece of his mind!

When Rodney, a friend of the nearsighted Mr. Magoo, goes to the hospital, Mr. Magoo decides to visit him and to take along some of his cure-all, homemade elixir. But he makes a wrong turn and ends up on a docked-ship visiting a stranger wearing a turban, thanking he is Rodney, and gives him some of the elixir. He returns home and gets a telephone call from Rodney who is waiting for his visit. He thinks Rodney is delirious and ventures forth for another visit carrying a giant-size bottle of his elixir.