Goofs for
The Lake House (2006) More at IMDbPro »

• Anachronisms: During a scene set in 2004, the Paul McCartney song "This Never Happened to Me Before" is featured prominently. This song is on the album "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," which was released on September 13, 2005.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The tree which Alex plants grows something like 20 feet taller in two years.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Kate is sitting at the table waiting for Alex, the candles are full candles. Even though she is supposedly waiting all night for him, in subsequent shots, the candles have not burned down.
  
  

• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Mona's words at the job site, as she's talking to Alex in the beginning, don't match her mouth.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Alex realizes it's Valentine's Day, he asks his brother "Valentine's Day, 2006?" but his mouth clearly says 2004.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In one scene there is snow on the ground where the house is located, but if you look across the lake there is no snow on the opposite bank.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Alex brings his father coffee in the hospital, there is clearly no coffee in the paper cup.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kate arrives at the bar she asks for a glass of wine. Immediately after her fellow resident doctor arrives and though we have not seen Kate drinking that much, in the next shot the glass is nearly empty.
  
  
• Factual errors: Kate and Alex are supposed to be living exactly two years apart throughout the film which is not possible because 2004 was a leap year, 2006 wasn't. Once it got to February 28th for both, the next day would be February 29th for Alex but March 1st for Kate.
  
  
• Plot holes: In 2006 Kate writes Alex about the dog and tells Alex that she has named the dog Jack. In 2004 when Alex reads this letter, he calls out "Jack!" and the dog responds by jumping up and barking, indicating that she knows her name. However, Kate hasn't met the dog yet, so the dog shouldn't have known the name Jack.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Kate is writing to Alex asking him to call her July 10, 2006 at 9:05 p.m., she mouths "July 10, 2004", but we hear 2006.
  
  
• Continuity: When Alex first meets Morgan at his house in 2004, there are dead leaves all over the yard of Morgan's house like it's the fall, but all the trees around are bright green and it's obviously spring- some of the trees are just starting to sprout leaves.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: While looking through the pictures she says "...in the year 2004" but her mouth says 2002.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The taxicabs in the film have the same color license plates in 2004 and 2006, even though Illinois taxi license plates are reissued annually with different colors. The blue plates shown in the film are the 2005 series.
  
  
• Continuity: When we first see the lake house tree, the shape of the leaf is different from the leaf that is present in two years later. The first doesn't appear to be the same type of Maple.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Alex catches up with his dog, Jack, at Morgan and Kate's house, Alex tells Morgan that Jack is a she, not a he. A few moments later, Alex's girlfriend, Mona, catches up with Alex and his dog. She says about the dog, "Oh, I see you found him."
  
  
• Errors in geography: The address that Kate (Sandra Bullock) lives at in 2006 - 1620 North Racine Street - is a non-existent address. While there is a North Racine Street in Chicago, it does not run in the 1600N block of the city.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mona is showing Alex her boots in the truck, the first shot is from the truck bed into the truck. There is a visible rear view mirror. Subsequent shots are from the front of the truck and the inside of the truck, and there is no rear view mirror.
  
  
• Plot holes: Before Kate sends the red scarf to Alex, she discusses the snow storm coming and says to the dog 'remember that day you were not happy' but the dog was supposedly with Alex in his time already and couldn't possibly have been with Kate during that snow storm.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene in the diner where Kate first shows the letters to her mother, there is a poster on the wall behind her advertising tickets to an event. The date on the poster clearly reads "December 15-26, 2004", but Kate is living in 2006. The conversation is also supposed to be taking place in the summer - a bit early to be selling tickets of only $15 for an event in December!
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Jack is finally caught, Alex clearly and loudly says "girl" when talking to the dog, but Morgan still refers to the dog as a male.
  
  
• Factual errors: Kate takes the Amtrak train out of the Riverside station to Madison, however the only trains that stop at the Riverside station are Metra trains to and from Chicago only, no Amtrak trains stop there.
  
  
• Continuity: When Alex shows his brother the lake house in 2004, he mentions that the house has no way to reach the water and that there should be a staircase so that you could go swimming. He adds the stairs himself later on. However, when Alex receives the book of his father's memoirs, he looks at a photo of his father and himself, a child, at the lake house. There are clearly stairs leading down to the water underneath the house, but the stairs did not exist until Alex added them in 2004.
  
  
• Continuity: When Alex is at the hospital talking to the doctor about his dad, his sweatshirt is zipped when the scene was shot from the side, and unzipped in the scene that is shot from the front, and then zipped again from the side again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Alex meets Morgan he's holding two cases of beer, one is clearly Samuel Adams and another case which is a black box with small white writing on it. After Alex ask if he needs helps, neither is carrying the Samuel Adams box, and Alex is carrying a Dogwood box which is black but has different pictures and writing than the other case Morgan was carrying.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Kate is at the kitchen table, talking to her mother about her mother's first love, there is a cutaway to Kate's face, right hand under her chin. When it cuts back, she is holding a knife and fork with two hands.
  
  
• Plot holes: Kate and Morgan are in the apartment. Kate is annoyed and stomps over to the bedroom area and breaks loose a piece of the hardwood. Hidden there, in a white paper bag, is the book that Alex retrieved for her when Kate had left it at the train station in 2004. Yet we never see the scene on how Alex could have possibly been able to put the book away under the hardwood floor.
  
  
• Continuity: When Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves) finds out that his dad is in the hospital he gets to the front desk to ask about his Dad's room. In that scene his sweat shirt was zipped up but when the attendant Anna Klyczynski (Shohreh Aghdashloo) realises he is the son of Simon Wyler ('Christopher Plummer') and comes round to talk to him his zipper is down.
  
  

• Plot holes: SPOILER: Kate writes to Alex in one letter that because a man died on Valentine's Day, his death is what brought her back to the lake house, and therefore, when she found Alex's first letter. However, when Kate realizes in 2008 that Alex was that same man who died on Valentine's Day, she warns him not to find her in order to save his life, and for him to find her at the lake house in another 2 years. Alex doesn't die, and he does meet Kate. However, even though Alex never died, this wouldn't have changed the fact that they began corresponding with one another because the initial reason why Kate wrote to Alex is because she wanted him to forward her the mail she was still receiving at the lake house.
  
  

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