The van der Waals interaction of hydrocarbon films in water is calculated using the exact expression derived by Parsegian and Ninham. The results are compared to an often used approximation, which fails for this system due to the large difference between the static dielectric constants of hydrocarbons and water. For large membrane separations the correct value of the van der Waals interaction is about a hundred times larger than the approximate result. The consequences for predicting unbinding transitions and interpreting experiments are discussed.