As Good As It Gets (1997) - 44 mistakes

Continuity: When Melvin and Carol enter the restaurant on their trip, a certain song is playing (I can't recall the song). Melvin leaves to buy a jacket, returns, and just after they are seated, you hear the female band leader say, "Here's a special song for...", and it's the same song they played 10 minutes ago.

Revealing: At the beginning of the movie, when Melvin catches Simon's dog, he holds it away from him, with his arms stretched.  When the dog begins to pee, you can see that the urine is coming out from Melvin's glove.

Visible crew/equipment: Early in the movie, Melvin walks for the first time to the restaurant in which Carol works. As Melvin turns the corner on the sidewalk and walks towards the camera, he is surrounded by extras playing people he must dodge. If you look in the center and right background, you will see New York spectators standing in the middle of the street, watching the movie being made.

Revealing: Midway through the film, Carol is on a bus heading to Melvin's apartment in Manhattan. She is going to tell him that she won't sleep with him after he has given her son free medical care. She is in a pensive mood and the camera pulls out showing her in the window. As the camera pulls out further, the readable sign on the side of the bus says "not in service."

Continuity: In the end when Melvin and Carol are kissing, his arm is around her neck. This arm changes from one arm to the other in a split second.

Continuity: When Carol and Melvin are in the restaurant in Baltimore, she is mad at him and he tells her to sit down. When the camera is on her, her hand is on her hip but when the camera cuts to Melvin, her arm is down over her stomach or in some other position during the scene.

Continuity: When we see Melvin's bedroom, when Simon is looking for the dog, the shelf above his bed is half filled with books and bottles of water. By the end of the phonecall with Carol, the shelf is completely filled.

Continuity: In the restaurant scene with Melvin and Carol, when she is taking her drink from the bar to their table with the help of a waiter, when she first picks up her drink there is very little in it, but when she takes the drink from the waiter and places it on the table it is practically full.

Continuity: Simon's cut on his lip is quite visible in the car on the trip down to Baltimore and on the way back to New York, but it miraculously disappears while they are staying in the hotel in Baltimore.

Continuity: When Carol tells Melvin off for trying to teach Spence manners Spence is standing in the kitchen. When the camera angle changes as Carol walks back to the kitchen counter Spence is standing in the background holding on to the door to the living room.

Continuity: When Carol and Melvin are talking in her restaurant and he is trying to convince her to go to Baltimore, she folds up her thank-you letter, but the subsequent shots show the many-paged letter is still open in her hand in the lower left of the screen.

Continuity: After Simon has to dismiss his housekeeper, she is leaving the apartment with her large purse in one hand and several carrier bags in the other. She then lifts her hand, which is now empty, and says, "But who's going to walk Verdell?" There was no time for her to shift or drop her purse.

Continuity: Before Carol takes a bath she tries to help Simon out of his shirt. In spite of being handicapped by his cast he insists on doing it by himself, although with difficulties, but he would never have managed to get out of his black pants into his jammie shorts between shots.

Continuity: When Simon comes to Melvin's apartment to tell him that he has found his dog and Melvin tells him not ever to knock at his door, not even when the smell of a decaying body is emanating through the door so that he has to put a hanky to his face because of the stench, the glasses he is holding in his right hand disappear and reappear between shots.

Continuity: When Melvin is chasing the couple away from "his" table the flowers in the vase on the table are red and orange. When he sits down, there is now a large pink flower in there too.

Continuity: After the trio's arrival in Baltimore, Carol is in her room placing a call home. When she is first pictured placing the call she has a pager clipped to her jeans. It is gone, never to reappear, in the next shot.

Continuity: When Carol apologizes to Melvin over the phone her watch rotates around the wrist while she is holding the receiver.

Continuity: Simon has a rack of pool balls on his coffee table. When Melvin is telling Simon about the bacon, the 2 ball (solid blue) is near the telephone. In the next shot, the dog jumps up to get the bacon and now the 3 ball (solid red) is near the phone.

Continuity: When Melvin and Frank are talking about taking Simon to Baltimore the flowers on the table are yellow and red. When Carol is reading her note to Melvin, they're orange and purple. The colour isn't off because Carol's top looks the same as before.

Continuity: When Simon's picture is unveiled, the model's hand is now not in either of the positions mentioned in the earlier mistake about the model's hand moving.

Continuity: In the scene where Simon is sketching/drawing Carol, he rips off the hand piece of his cast so he can move his hand freely. When they are getting out of the car once they get home, you can see that the hand piece of cast that Simon ripped off is back on his hand and the cast is undamaged.

Continuity: In the scene where the three of them are driving to Baltimore, Carol has a zit on her face. In the next shot it is gone.

Continuity: Melvin is sitting at his desk at home. He takes off his glasses and he stands up to look through the window. When he is about to look outside, the camera shot outside his apartment shows that he takes off his glasses again.

Continuity: When we see Simon in hospital after being badly beaten up by the thugs, he has long, similar stitches over his face and also over the bridge of his nose. When he is released from hospital most of the cuts have left very visible scars of almost Frankensteinian quality, only the injury on the nose is hardly visible. At the end of the movie, for example when he is talking to his parents over the phone, his nose is now unblemished while the other scars still look quite frightening.

Continuity: When Melvin tells Simon in very clear terms that he doesn't wish to be disturbed for any reason whatsoever Simon's shirt is open almost down to his belt. When he turns away after Melvin has closed the door the shirt is almost buttoned up.

Continuity: After Simon does his imitation of Melvin, he apologizes to Verdell and we see him put his right hand to his forehead - and the same shot from behind him a split second later shows his hand to his mouth.

Continuity: In the hospital, Jackie goes to give Simon her mirror so he can look at himself, and her green purse is scrunched up under her arm. As the shot changes to a wider angle, the purse is now hanging over her stomach.

Other: Right at the end of the movie Melvin and Carol walk by a bakery. Suddenly the lights go on showing staff at work like sweeping the floor, indicating that they must have been doing this in the dark.

Visible crew/equipment: When Carol leaves by bus for the trip to Baltimore she waves Spence good-bye. At the end of the scene there is a reflection of a cameraman in the window.

Continuity: When Melvin asks his publisher if her husband doctor can help Spence her hairdo keeps changing between tucked behind her right ear and falling loose over her cheek.

Continuity: When Melvin feeds Verdell for the first time the dog is standing still at the edge of the carpet, facing his dish. When the camera angle changes he is standing further back. Then he lies down, and when the camera angle changes again he is lying at a different spot.

Continuity: When Carol brings her date home he lifts her up, puts her on the sofa and starts kissing her down the right side of her neck. When the camera angle changes he is kissing her on her mouth with his head on the other side.

Continuity: In the first diner scene we see Carol dealing with some guests and she is not wearing a watch. When she passes by Melvin, who is waiting impatiently for his table, she suddenly has one on her wrist.

Continuity: In the beginning of the movie, when Simon asks Melvin if he has seen his dog, he has a towel thrown over his shoulder which is differently arranged in shots from the front and from the back.

Continuity: In Simon's sketch, Carol is lying the opposite way to the way she is really lying.

Continuity: When Melvin and Carol are talking in the restaurant about Spence's asthma, the plates that Carol is holding are rotated differently in each shot. Also the way she is holding them keeps changing (hand under the plate or thumb over the rim).

Continuity: When Simon is explaining to the model how he decides how to paint a person and then tells him to hold it, we see the position the model is in. However, in the very next shot his hand is in a different position it was than when he told him to freeze it.

Continuity: When Melvin answers the door when Carol comes over in the rain, his hair is standing up crazily. In the very next shot, it is neatly pressed down - he didn't have time to run his hands through his hair to fix it between shots.

Continuity: After Melvin orders crabs his tie knot keeps changing back and forth between the striped and the checkered pattern of his tie.

Continuity: In the scene before Carol goes to Melvin's house, she is sitting on the couch wide awake. Carol has one blue eye and one brown.

Continuity: When Melvin gets up to go give Simon some Chinese soup, the clock reads 3:22am. The next scene in Carol's apartment is supposedly later on the same night, yet the babysitter has just arrived, her child is still up, and she and her mom are getting ready to go out for the night (even telling the babysitter that there's pizza in the freezer they can cook later). We know it is supposed to be the same night because in the ensuing scene, Frank tells Melvin he heard he "brought Simon chicken soup last night."

Continuity: When Melvin goes to the restaurant after seeing the psychiatrist and is not served by Carol he bangs on the table and tells the waitress to go and get her. The flowers in the vase on the table change twice in consecutive shots. Pre-bang = yellow, orange and red. Post-bang 1 = white, 2 yellow and red. Post-bang 2 = 2 white and 2 yellow.

Continuity: In the first diner scene Melvin sits down and takes off his glasses. He starts fiddling with the button of his breast pocket. When the camera angle changes his hands are somewhere else and the pocket is still buttoned. When it changes again he is putting his glasses into the now unbuttoned pocket.

Continuity: When we see Carol writing the thankyou note, the page is numbered (23), there are 8 lines of writing on the page and she says she is on the last page. When she is looking up the word 'conscience' in the dictionary, the paper is visible again but it is a different sheet - there is no number and there are only 4 lines of writing. It is the page she is about to write on because the last words written are 'have it on my ' - 'conscience' following this phrase makes sense.