The Parent Trap

Revealing mistake: When in Boston, while walking through the park, Susan and her mother are obviously walking on a treadmill because the park background is moving way too fast for their walking speed.

William Bergquist

Revealing mistake: When Mitch is driving "Susan" home from the airport, in one shot, the knob of the gear selector lever is visible above the dashboard, which means the transmission would be in Park.

mdwalker

Revealing mistake: When the "twins" are singing "Let's Get Together" they are standing side by side. Watch closely - because of the split screen, one twin's arm disappears for just a second when she swings it upwards. It actually happens twice - middle of song and end.

Revealing mistake: When Susan goes outside to sit on steps after the rain has stopped you can see her double siting on the bunk looking at her photo album.

Revealing mistake: When they are driving home from the airport, you can see the reflection of the green screen on the car hood.

Revealing mistake: Susan's camp friend with the light blond hair continually repeats the last word or line of the person before her, or mouths it to be ready for her own lines. In the dining room when the twins first see each other, Susan says something like "Whatever can I do about it?" and while she's saying that, the other girl is mouthing the words, then says her own line. She also does it in the shower scene, where they're talking about revenge, the other friend of Susan's says, "Give it to her good!" then this mimicker says, "Good. The old coventry treatment..."

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Suggested correction: To start with the dining scene, she is not mouthing her lines, she only once moves her mouth a little but it wasn't to mouth the other girl's lines. And when she says "Good" she's not repeating the other girl's lines she confirming what the other girl said.

Continuity mistake: When the twins are in the cabin and Sharon offers Susan a Fig Newton, the cookies are is a jumble in the box. A moment later, the cookies are in a clean row.

More mistakes in The Parent Trap

Verbena 'Ever's Housekeeper': I'm not saying a word. Not one single word.

More quotes from The Parent Trap

Trivia: For the scene when the camp girls are following the twins to the cabin Miss Inch was putting them in, the director wanted the girls to march like soldiers. The girls could not march very well, so he just decided to leave it as it was. The whistling the girls do is not the girls' whistling--its a recording of the march from Bridge on the River Kwai.

More trivia for The Parent Trap

Question: What kind of judge would agree to this kind of custody arrangement?

Answer: None. It's total fiction made up solely for the purpose of the movie. Even for a movie, it's far beyond the "suspension of disbelief" that siblings would ever be divided up between the two parents, and neither would have no contact with them, much less be prevented from knowing they had a brother or sister.

raywest

It was during the 1960s, the courts had no way of forcing parents to share children. They could have very easily just stayed away from each other out of the view of the judicial system.

This is what I always assumed as well. That this wasn't decided by court, the parents decided this on their own and did not bring it up to the court.

There has actually been a history of separating identical twins as babies, as there has been a fascination in studying what ways they'd be alike, and how they'd be different. During this time period, there were even agencies that would pay women who gave birth to identical twins to give them up for adoption, and have them be adopted in separate families. In today's world, this would not happen, but I wouldn't put it past a judge back in the 1960s.

More questions & answers from The Parent Trap

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