Goofs

When at the motel, Sheryl reads off the three room numbers they are staying in as 11, 12, and 13. When Grandpa and Olive go into their room and shut the door, though, the number reads 208.

In the first dinner scene where the family is eating chicken, Sheryl pours Dwayne some Sprite. Later when the shot shows the whole table, the bottle is completely full.

When Olive and her mom are in the dressing room, we see one little girl wearing a 2-piece suit walking in the background. A few seconds later, the same little girl is walking outside in the hallway in front of Dwayne, wearing a dress.

Projector in the beginning for the 9 steps does not have a power cord/source.

At dinner, the salad bowl disappears and reappears in Richard's hand between shots.

A bad clutch could not be overcome to jump start the way they do it. The engine would turn over whenever they pushed the vehicle, causing too much resistance to get the vehicle going.

They'd still need to disengage a clutch to push the van, accelerate to starting speed, then pop the clutch to turn over the engine. That's what they appeared to do in the film.

If it had a bad starter, one could use the technique in the film.

The inability to shift is usually not a symptom of a bad clutch. It is possible to shift without depressing the pedal, so having a bad clutch wouldn't make moving the shifter any more difficult.

While driving down highway, at one point police car escort can be seen out the back window of the van.

When Dwayne and Frank are going to bed and Dwayne writes "welcome to hell" on his notepad, his writing motions only spell out "welcome to" and then he flashes the notepad to Frank.

When Richard is explaining how he sold his idea to Stan Grossman, Frank is being sarcastic. When those two are going back and forth, you can see through the front window that the van is on the access road instead of the highway. You can see the stop sign approaching which wouldn't be on the highway.

Key point in the movie: when Frank emerges from the gas station convenience store, you can very briefly see Olive standing by the entrance as the camera pans while Frank is walking back to the van. In the shot immediately after, we see Cheryl emerging from the store but Olive is no longer there and though we have to assume she wandered off somewhere, we don't see her until they drive back to get her after they discover she's not in the van.

When Frank turns the TV on in the motel to try and prevent Dwayne listening to his parents arguing in the next room, President George W. Bush is shown on the TV making a speech. The clip in question is all taken from one sentence of an August 24th, 2001 speech announcing the nomination of Air Force General Richard Myers for the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The clip starts in the middle of the sentence, but as camera angles change it jumps first back to the start of the sentence, and then to almost the end of the sentence. To add further confusion, while this clip suggests the film to be set in 2001, near the end of the movie we see a New York Times Book Review cover listing a June 2005 article, "The Passions of Robert Lowell" - making it unusual for an almost four year old speech to be on television.

When Richard closes the trunk of the van at the hotel, the sound of it closing can be heard a little bit after he actually closes it.

When Frank and Dwayne are talking on the pier, Dwayne's microphone wire is visible through his shirt on the left side. Then at the end of the scene, the transmitter is visible under his shirt, also on the left side, under his belt.

The family spends the night in Scottsdale, yet they state that they only have 200 miles to go to get to Redondo Beach. Redondo Beach is nearly 400 miles west of Scottsdale.

The movie ends with the Hoovers driving into the sunset back to New Mexico. However, the sun sets in the West, and New Mexico is east of LA

The takeout chicken served for dinner at the house in Albuquerque is from Dinah's Fried Chicken. Dinah's only has restaurants in Southern California.

When a driver cuts off the van in traffic (and Richard honks the horn at the driver, causing the horn to honk continuously), the signs over the freeway indicate that they are on the westbound Marina Freeway (California 90) at the ramp to the northbound San Diego Freeway (Interstate 405). This intersection is about five miles south of the 20th Century Fox Studios and about 10 miles north of their destination, Redondo Beach. Minutes later, when the highway patrolman pulls them over, they are still somewhere on the road to the Los Angeles area.

Although the family is leaving their home in New Mexico, the first few shots of the bus were clearly filmed near Vasquez Rocks, near Santa Clarita, California.

The uneven participation of the girls during the pageant makes no sense; they seem to mix and match various girls, but all of them do not seem to be present at all events. For instance you never see the first two girls presented on stage again for the remainder of the program. The host says there are twelve girls in the competition, but after the initial introduction, the catwalk routine, you see only six girls in a row on stage, all about the same age/height. They start on one end, and after only two girls' participation, they jump immediately to Olive on the opposite end. Seconds later, after Olive finishes, you see all twelve contestants on stage. During the talent competition, we see new girls never initially shown at the introduction. And why are so many girls, non-participants, dressed up as though ready to compete, in the audience?

In the first scene in the van, Olive isn't wearing her glasses. Although a viewer could easily say she took them off so her headphone wouldn't make them dig into her head, this was actually a mistake that the directors didn't notice for a very long time.

When the Hoovers get breakfast at the diner, Olive orders the waffles a la mode. However, she is served a bowl of ice cream, separate from her waffles. Furthermore, she is served chocolate ice cream, when she didn't request a specific flavor. Waffles a la mode are served with one or two scoops of ice cream on top, and the flavor is most often vanilla.