Gloria sells dolls in benefit of UNICEF and is interested in putting on an international show. In a hotel in Acapulco the ranchero Javier, the Muslims Mustafa and Ali, the Brazilian Mr. Carioca and the charro José Lorenzo meet to carry out the project. Among the men there will be a series of entanglements to dispute the love of the young woman.
Blair, Tootie, Natalie, Jo, Beverly Ann, and Andy visit the land down under. Blair and Jo are warned of a planned jewel heist; Beverly Ann visits a beau from many years ago; Natalie is stranded in the outback; and Tootie meets a Yale student who pretends to be a young Aborigine.
Matt is a screenwriter whose career is not going especially well and whose personal life is dwindling into nothingness. Matt starts talking with his friends about suicide, and nearly all of them become deeply concerned, convinced his depression has taken him over the edge. Matt insists to all around him that his questions about killing himself are merely part of his research for a script about a man who has turned suicidal. But his ex-girlfriend Amanda is the only one that seems to believe it.
Eddie Tayloe's grandfather leaves him six thousand dollars and the money belt it came in, freeing Tayloe to leave his dull newspaper job in Texas and move to New York to become a playwright. Along the way, his car breaks down and a girl walking along the highway asks for a lift. It turns out she's a nice girl, named Perry, running away from a job at a gasoline station. Soon they're off to New York together, but part ways once they arrive. Time passes and Eddie is failing to sell his play; Perry is failing to find a job. Odd circumstances, involving an old pickpocket named Mandy, bring them together again.
When the chemical company owned by eccentric Professor Higginbottom files for bankruptcy, the formerly-affluent family loses its income. Levelheaded oldest daughter Lambie struggles to make ends meet but has trouble persuading her carefree, profligate siblings to cut down on their spending. Youngest brother Dick enters a motorcycle race to win $500, but crashes his bike on the speedway and is paralyzed. Shocked into reality by the tragedy, Lambie's younger sister Babs persuades ex-prizefighter Gunboat Bimms to enter the ring one last time in hopes of winning a purse that will pay for Dick's surgery.
After being run out of town after town for trying to sell worthless stock, two con artists breeze into the small town of Chesterville, where they find themselves accused of kidnapping a young boy to whom they offered a ride. When that misunderstanding is cleared up, the two conmen hatch a plot to unload all their worthless paper on the gullible citizens of Chesterville.
Gene returns from the East with new ranch owner Tom Bennett to find everyone's cattle dying. Blaine has reopened the copper mine and the waste is poisoning the water supply. While Gene is away Tom confronts the miners and a man is killed in the ensuing gunfight. Now Gene not only has the dying cattle problem but his ranch owner is in jail.
Tim McGuerin and Eddie Corbett operates a big taxi-fleet company together and because of a misunderstanding Tim's wife Sadie thinks he is having an affair with his secretary, Ms. Lucy Gibbs. To annoy Tim, Sadie starts taking classes with a fitness instructor, Samson, and later going with him to his out-of-town health club. To sort out all the misunderstandings both Tim and Eddie go to the health club as well.
Colonel Barkley is very proud of his assistant, Sergeant Doubleday, who has a photographic memory. Doubleday shows off his book knowledge on firearms during a class given by Sergeant Ames, embarrassing him. Through a series of misunderstandings, Colonel Barkley thinks the gun shy Doubleday is an expert marksman, and he sets him up in a shooting match against Ames and Sergeant Cobb.