User Reviews

This is a Mister Magoo short from the UPA Studios. There will be spoilers ahead:

Magoo is practicing putting with some interesting "golf balls", in anticipation of his admittance into a country club through his "old friend Judge Stevens". He gets a telegram which he misreads (of course) and, thinking he's been admitted, starts out for the club to play a round of golf.

He winds up in a paddy wagon headed off to prison, where no one is bright enough to figure out that they have someone by mistake. Naturally, Magoo mistakes the prison for the country club and keeps trying to play golf. There follow a series of Magoo-style mishaps until the warden figures out that a mistake has been made.

The warden apologizes to Magoo and tells him he really doesn't belong there, which Magoo takes as a rejection of him from the "club'". The ending is hilarious.

Shout! Factory has assembled an excellent box set featuring all of the Magoo theatrical shorts and a Magoo feature. This short is good and the set is recommended.

Whatever happened to Mr Magoo? Would you believe there are folk, now hitting fifty, who've never seen a Magoo cartoon in their lives?

Ground-breaking in concept and execution, the brilliantly minimalist-in-design UPA cartoons, unlike M-G-M, Paramount, and Warner Bros efforts, have rarely played on TV. Not that I would relish seeing a 'Scope cartoon panned and scanned on television, but I remember this one with particular affection.

Mistaking a paddy wagon for a bus, Magoo ends up in prison, but the near-sighted, half-deaf cretin imagines he's actually within the confines of an exclusive country club where he aims to play golf! A neat central joke, cleverly developed, "Magoo Breaks Par" sparkles along towards a delightfully ironic conclusion.