What Women Want

What Women Want (2000)

31 mistakes - chronological order

(4 votes)

Continuity mistake: The young Nick doesn't have "baby blues" as his ex-wife describes them in the opening credits. (00:02:45 - 00:03:30)

Factual error: I live in Chicago, and live near where they filmed the outside shots. Every time we see Mel coming out of his apartment, the address says 2400 Lakeview Drive. However, anyone who lives by here knows that this particular building has no balconies, and Mel repeatedly went out, or looked over his balcony. (00:05:20 - 00:43:00)

Continuity mistake: When Nick first enters Sloane Curtis and is talking to one of his male co-workers, in the background there is a man in the typing away at his computer. He gets up and walks off, then the camera angle changes for a few seconds. When it returns, the man returns to his computer. It cuts away and returns a few more times, rather quickly, each time showing the man returning to his computer. (00:08:35)

Continuity mistake: When Mel is watching TV on the sofa and serving himself from a bottle of champagne you can see a front view of him using his right hand and tilting the bottle toward his right side, then there is a change of scene (from the back of the sofa) and his right hand his tilted to this left side. (00:20:35)

Continuity mistake: When Mel tries on the pantyhose, the hole in the left leg changes from large on the outside of his leg, to small with a run on the outside of his leg to large on the inside of his leg. (00:25:45)

Continuity mistake: When Mel Gibson is slipping across the bathroom floor on the bath beads, immediately after remembering the name of his daughters' boyfriend, his pantyhose don't have any holes in them. Earlier in the scene, he makes a big hole in the ankle. (00:26:00 - 00:28:20)

Revealing mistake: When Nick drops the blowdryer, and it's moving in slow motion toward the tub, why is the blowdryer casting shadows on the ceiling directly above the tub? That would mean there are lights either in the tub or on the floor right next to it. (00:29:00)

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Mel Gibson is in the department store trying to listen to womens' thoughts (to see if he has successfully rid himself of his "gift"), you can clearly see he is standing on a white marble floor. A couple of shots later (when he discovers that he still has his "gift"), the camera angle moves above his head as he looks toward the ceiling; you can clearly see that he is now standing on an inlaid marble star in the floor. (00:46:16)

Continuity mistake: When Mel Gibson is in the doctor's office and he comments on the lamp that she bid for on Ebay by reading her mind, she also has the auction page up on her computer. If you look closely you will notice that the auction is not an Ebay auction, but rather a Yahoo! auction. (00:47:30)

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Mel Gibson is talking to Bette Midler (the psychiatrist) and she realises his "talent" she puts her pen down, then it shoots back to him, and then back to her and she drops her pen on the ground. (00:48:10)

Continuity mistake: Bette Midler lights up a joint and then goes to sit next to Mel Gibson. She has the joint when she sits down, but in the next shot she's gesturing with her hands and the joint is gone. (00:49:00)

Factual error: When Nick is in the psychiatrist's office and tells her he can read women's minds, Bette Midler's character says, "Sigmund Freud spent his entire life trying to understand what women want," or something to that effect. Actually, Freud didn't care much about the psychology of women, he simply passed them off as having "penis envy". Most psychologists today recognize that Freud was a little off base. It seems like the writers just used Freud's name because he's the only psychologist the general public would know by name. (00:49:10)

Continuity mistake: When Mel is kissing the girl from the coffee shop outside her house, she tilts her head to the her left. In the next shot, she is to the right. (01:00:50)

Continuity mistake: In the scene in the bar, Helen Hunt and Mel Gibson are talking. During the dialogue, the camera cuts from one face to the other. Helen Hunt's hair is sometimes in front of her shoulder, and sometimes behind. (01:22:30)

Continuity mistake: When Helen Hunt first gives Mel Gibson a tour of her new apartment, she shows him the bedroom, where you can clearly see brown paper taped on the floor where the head of her bed would be. While they are dancing, there is no paper there. (01:38:00 - 01:38:55)

Revealing mistake: When Mel Gibson races out of his agency to catch his own taxi to find Judy Greer, the taxi begins to signal it is going to pull over even before he whistles or gestures to it. There is no one already in the taxi so it would have had no other reason for pulling over. (01:42:05)

Continuity mistake: When the old Chinese granny shows Mel where to go, she is shown holding the umbrella with him, one shot, her hand is above his, and in the next shot it is below his. (01:42:50)

Continuity mistake: At the beginning, when Lauren Holly is explaining about her ex-husband, the little boy has a photo taken with all the girls. The woman on the far left opens her jacket in a flasher style, but in the actual picture, her hands are on her hips.

Other mistake: When Nick thinks he is going to be promoted he talks to his PAs about moving to the 44th floor. In the shot of the office building (after he leaves the coffee shop on the way to work) it's obvious that the building only has about 10 floors.

Continuity mistake: Just before Mel says "You go girl" he grabs a bottle of wine by the neck, then the camera switches view, and he is holding it at the middle of the bottle.

Alex: Oh please, Mom had this talk with me when I was like, 11.

More quotes from What Women Want

Trivia: You may have gotten a twitch of deja vu when he exited the building in the rain, with the camera facing south toward the Chicago Board of Trade building. The scene was located in the exact same place, on the exact same corner, in front of the exact same building as a scene in Payback (albeit without the paper vending machine to put a gun in).

More trivia for What Women Want

Question: Why is it that Nick can't hear what his two women co-workers are thinking?

Answer: The joke is that they have no thoughts for him to hear.

Garlonuss

More questions & answers from What Women Want

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