The Older People Are WAY Too Old

This is something which doesn't sit well with me either (all of the older charcters should be in their early 40s, not knocking 60!), but having said that everyone is having such a great time in this film I can forgive the bizarre casting!

did the movie specified Donna's age? are your referring to the age of Meryl Streep only?
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I am sick and tired of "the book is ten times better than the movie".
Just shut up please.

When it was conceived and written back in 1997, the timeline fit better. Sophie would have been conceived around 1976 - exactly the heyday of ABBA, interestingly enough. Free spirits of the day still dressed in hippie-ish clothes, punkers existed - there certainly is believability in the personal styles of the flashback characters. That could put the age of Donna Sheridan at around 25 perhaps. After all, she already had a longish career with the Dynamo's, whose wardrobe screamed the '70's, and so Meryl wouldn't have been that young. Her mom was dead in the movie, so she must have just had one of those old-fashioned mom. Think - if Meryl Streep had been cast in the original play version in 1999, she would have been the perfect age for the part - mid-forties. Sooo...in my estimation, it's actually the Sophie character who is too young for a 2008 version. She should be around 30 - ah, but then she wouldn't be so sweet and innocent...

Like a previous writer said, "suspend disbelief." This is a myth, after all...RELAX & ENJOY!

It certainly is very feasible to have a baby at the age of 40, to be a hippie at the age of 40, and for her parents to disown her when she got pregnant. I think Colin Firth's character is the only one who mentioned being young when he was with her. It is also very possible for a many in his early 20s to have an affair with a 40 year old woman.
One thing that I liked about the movie was it showed "older" woman singing and dancing and being sensuous.

I agree with several comments on this thread that we are to think they are in their 40s because of some references to the past and the clothes. But that happens in movies a lot where people are playing people way younger than their real selves. If most recall the majority of the actors in Grease were late 20s and early 30's. Olivia was 30 and Stockard 32, both playing 18 yr old high schoolers. The only person in the cast who was close to the age she was supposed to be playing was Dinah Manoff who played Marti and was 19 at the time of the movie.

Yes, you're right, they are all too old for them to have been having flings in their late teens/early 20s. Plus, flower power was well over by the time Sophie was supposed to have been born (thinking about Pierce Brosnan's character) ............1988 given when the movie was made.

But it was a fun movie and I thought Meryl looked excellent in it - very youthful for a woman who was about to hit 60 when it was shot.

In reality, someone like Kylie would have been about the right age for Donna, but she doesn't actually look that much older than Sophie!

I agree, they are all quite old but the men somehow manage to pull it off mainly because they don't have a lot of over-the-top singing or dancing to do. Streep (and her two friends) however, are WAY too old to fit in this storyline. Streep looks like Sophie's grandmother and she acts overly childish throughout the movie (perhaps trying to over-compensate for her age).

Not that I have anything against Streep, I have loved her in every movie of hers that I've seen. But this movie required a cast of people in their 40's not their 60's.

An interesting bit of info, in real-life, Streep is actually older than all 3 of the leading men.

I think it works alright. Just because Meryl Streep was in her 60's (or 50's) in real life, doesn't mean her character has to be. It's a movie. She certainly looks younger than she is, so what's the problem.