Corrected entry: After Melanie and Jake have a fight when Jake finds out she used all the money in the joint account, Melanie drives to a restaurant in the car that was impounded by the police. There is no scene showing her getting her car back.
Corrected entry: When Melanie and Jake meet in the house for the first time in the film, he jerks the phone cord out of the wall. Later, when he doesn't want to talk to her, he unplugs the phone cord from the back of the phone to keep it from ringing. We never see the phone cord repaired from the rip out of the wall.
Correction: You don't see anyone use the toilet either. There is plenty of opportunity for the phone line to be repaired during the movie.
Corrected entry: When Melanie outs Bobby Ray at the honky-tonk by saying that he should go to a gay bar, one of the other characters uses the wrong name when he asks why "Billy Ray" would go to a gay bar.
Correction: The person says, 'What would B-Ray do at a gay bar.' We can easily presume B-Ray is Bobby Ray's nickname.
Corrected entry: If Bobby Ray and the rest of the town knew about Melanie getting engaged then they would have known she changed her last name to Carmichael before she went to visit Bobby Ray at the plantation with the "reporter", so Bobby Ray wouldn't have been surprised she "lied" about their name.
Correction: I believe Bobby Ray's reason for being surprised is misunderstood by the writer of this post. Bobby Ray is surprised at realizing that Melanie has been lying to people in New York about her Alabama past; not that she changed her name.
Corrected entry: When the caterers start arriving for Melanie and Andrew's southern wedding, one of the trucks is a big red one with the name "3 Cheers Party Rentals" on it with several big cities named where it has offices. A quick check of this company on the Internet shows the company began in 2007. "Sweet Home Alabama" was released in 2002, five years BEFORE the company was started.
Correction: It's a fictional company. Perhaps the one started five years later got their name from the movie, but "Three Cheers Party Rental" isn't exactly the most obscure party company name.
Corrected entry: The movie's Southern location is in Southern Alabama, near Greenville, Alabama to be exact. But when Jake goes to get into his truck to go to the beach to do the lightning/sand thing, an inspection sticker for the state of Georgia is visible in the truck window behind the driver' seat. Georgia, outside Atlanta, is where that segment was filmed. Somebody forgot to take the sticker out of the window when the film company rented the truck.
Correction: Georgia doesn't have inspection stickers. It is actually just a sticker for the Georgia Outdoor Network. GON.
Corrected entry: Erin Vanderbilt, whom Andrew, Melanie's ex-fiance, marries in the end has the same family name as Warner's brother's fiancee in "Legally Blonde" (2000). It is Vanderbilt.
Correction: Vanderbilt is the name of a very rich American family. The are as close as it comes to royalty there, and therefore it's the equivalent of Andrew marrying someone with the surname Windsor in Britan.
Correction: There's irony for you, Andrew led the audience to believe that it did not matter that Melanie was poor. Then he marries Erin Vanderbilt at the end who is rich, so it goes to show that wealth did really matter to Andrew.
Corrected entry: When Melanie wakes up and sees the divorce papers signed by Jake, it's just his signature. There's a visible place for the witness to sign and it isn't signed by anybody. Later, when Melanie is about the sign the papers, there again is no witness to his signature. (00:54:20)
Correction: As clearly pointed out in the movie she forgot to sign the divorce contract at all herself. It is quite conceivable that she also forgot the witness if she even forgot herself.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Melanie's dad is re-enacting the civil war battle, notice in the background the Union Soldiers are carrying a 50 state flag. At that point in time the U.S. didn't quite have that many states. (01:08:25)
Correction: Yes that true but this is a re-enactment that the community does for fun. They needed a flag as a prop for the war they are acting out so they purchased one. And besides that where on earth would they get anything but a current American flag. You can't simply go to you local wall-mart and say "I need your biggest 47 star flag from the top shelf please," sometimes you just have to use what's available.
Corrected entry: Every time you see Melanie's engagement ring from Andrew, look closely, it doesn't fit. If she picked out her own ring, why would she get one that looks to be about three sizes too big?
Correction: Melanie couldn't have gotten the ring sized in just a few minutes. It takes quite a while to size a ring, and I think she wanted to take it down to Alabama with her to show her parents. She picked out a ring, and probably thought she could get it sized later, since the divorce was such an important matter.
Corrected entry: During the scene when Melanie shows up on Jake's front porch, his jaw drops when she asks him to sign the divorce papers and he realizes who she is. Are we to believe that she's changed so much that even her husband can't recognize her?
Correction: Jaw dropping doesn't mean non recognition, it is much more likely to be surprise at the request. We have no idea what Melanie looked liked before so we don't know how much she may have changed.
Corrected entry: When Melanie is walking down the street in Alabama when she first gets there and is talking to Bobby Ray, he says he'd been reading about her on the internet. If this were true, Melanie would have to be using either her last name Smooter, or he would have to know her 'Melanie Carmichael' alias, which he doesn't know about until later in the movie. (00:30:15)
Correction: Melanie has became a somewhat famous fashion designer. She appears in the news and magazines. It would be somewhat difficult for any of her Alabama friends or family to not know she goes by the alias Melanie Carmichael. Her friends and family were just shocked to find out how in depth Melanie used her alter-ego. I don't think they knew that she pretty much completely cut off her Alabama roots while in New York.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Melanie is in the backyard at the Carmichael plantation looking for Bobby Ray, Colonel Murphry says he cant find the fuse, Bobby Ray then pulls it out of his back pocket but he wouldn't have had time to put it there between the time when he sees Melanie and runs around the bushes to her.
Correction: They have already used the fuse, lit it and set off the anvil before Melanie shows up. Why would Bobby Ray keep the fuse out and be holding it while they are setting up and lighting the one to go off? The likely course of events is to take the fuse out of your pocket, take out the one that you need, put the fuse back in your pocket and then continue to work with and light the fuse you took out. So, the fuses would have been in his pocket when Melanie arrived.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Pearl is helping Melaine get ready for her wedding, Pearl's hair is clipped back on the right side and in the next shot it is clipped back on the left side.
Correction: It changes because you are seeing her reflection in a mirror.
Correction: In the mirror it's on the left side and when she steps out of the mirror and not in a reflection it's on the right side.
Corrected entry: When Melanie first arrives in town, she sees Bobby Ray and asks about the "Little woman". If she knew he was gay, why bother asking, it's not as if she was trying to cover because they were in public. If you look in the background, no extras are anywhere near the two.
Correction: At that point in the movie Bobby Ray isn't "out" yet and probably doesn't know that Melanie knows he is gay. As a way for her to not let on that she knows he is gay is to ask him about the "little woman".
Corrected entry: How can it be that pictures of Melanie and her famous fiance are on the covers of all the papers, and no one in her hometown - including her own parents - has a clue who she's dating? They can't be that out of it. (00:12:40)
Correction: Melanie's engagement only appeared in, most likely, New York magazines/papers and fashion magazines. The characters in the film portrayed people who probably really didn't care about what's going on in New York or what's happening in fashion.
Corrected entry: When Melanie is talking to Josh's mother at her bar, the mother in law raises a box with her left hand, but in the next shot she is holding the box with her right arm. (00:37:40)
Correction: Jake's mother lifts the box first with her left hand, but in the same shot she raises her right hand to the top of the box, which is in line with the following shot.
Corrected entry: When Melanie first goes to Jake's house the dog is barking while they're talking. They say shut up Aaron but at the end of the movie when they are at the reception the dog starts barking and they say shut up Brian instead of Aaron.
Corrected entry: Melanie's clothes get increasingly "countrified" the more time she spends in Alabama, but where did these frilly flowered blouses and cowboy boots come from? It seems unlikely that she would buy them (if she had we should have been allowed to witness it, as it would have been a major plot point,) and even more unlikely that she would have brought them with her.
Correction: Melanie (Reese) returns home to Alabama, and goes to her parent's house. It shows when she is cleaning her room before Candice Bergen arrives to visit her parents, that some of her personal stuff is still in her old room, ie: trophies and crowns and such, she obviously left behind a lot of clothes as well.
Corrected entry: When Melanie's parents are arguing about the volume on the television while on the phone, Pearl says, "They could have heard it all the way at Joe and Lurlynn's house" but Lurlynn is married to Clinton, not Joe.
Correction: It's Joe and Merlene, not Clinton and Lurlynn.
Correction: For the same reason we don't see Melanie sleeping or Jake eating breakfast every morning. The director chooses which events are important enough to be shown. Just because we don't see something or have it told explicitly to us, doesn't mean it didn't happen.