Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again, the forthcoming sequel movie, is bound to be a crime against nature for many reasons, but the main one is the inclusion of Cher. I have nothing against Cher – please, nobody send me a furious Twitter-stream of incomprehensible emojis – but her role in the movie does need to be carefully examined.
In Mamma Mia 2, Cher will play Meryl Streep’s mother. Meryl Streep is 68 years old. Cher is 71. And this means that, in the Mamma Mia universe, Cher gave birth to Meryl Streep when she was three. This is horrific. It goes against everything we stand for as a species. Both morally and legally, it is a travesty. Although it does perhaps explain why Streep can endure Pierce Brosnan’s injured caterwauling so well; her life has clearly been filled with so much incredible hurt that she cannot feel pain any longer.
But, hey, this is Hollywood. By no means is this the first time there has been an unworkable age difference between parent and child in a movie. Cher, Meryl; these are your filmic parent-child bedfellows now.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: 12-year difference
Harrison Ford was 47 when Last Crusade was released. The film’s big gimmick was that this time we’d get to meet his father. However, the wizened old patriarch was played by Sean Connery, who was then 59. This meant that Jones Sr must have met and married a woman, found a well-paying job and had a baby at the first opportunity puberty allowed. Connery initially turned down the role because of this ridiculous age difference. He did, however, jump at the chance to sleep with a woman four decades younger than him in Entrapment.
The Fighter: 10-year difference
Biopic The Fighter presented Melissa Leo with the role of a lifetime; a hard-bitten mother of nine scratching her way through life in working-class Massachusetts. The real-life character she plays gave birth to Mickey Ward when she was 34. However, Ward was played by Mark Wahlberg, who is only a decade younger than Leo. To further complicate matters, Christian Bale – who plays Wahlberg’s older brother – is two years younger than Wahlberg. Someone is getting it wrong here. It seems sensible to blame Wahlberg, for no other reason than because he’s made more Transformers films than the rest of the cast.
Mean Girls: seven-year difference
Rachel McAdams is 39. Amy Poehler, who played McAdams’ mother in Mean Girls, is 46. To give Mean Girls its dues, this age difference does sort of work. Poehler’s character is supposed to have a creepy infatuation with youth, so it only makes sense to imagine that she was some sort of nightmarish child bride who has chosen to live vicariously through her daughter in a manic attempt to regain the childhood that was stolen from her at a tragically young age, right? Mean Girls is a comedy.
Brokeback Mountain: four-year difference
When films take place over a number of years, you’ll often find they take liberties with ages. Sally Field had to loll around in full old-age makeup for much of Forrest Gump, even though she was only 10 years older than Tom Hanks. However, Brokeback Mountain – in which 22-year-old Kate Mara played the 19-year-old daughter of 26-year-old Heath Ledger – takes the biscuit. To see the pair of them sharing the screen, they look the exact same age. It’s hard to tell if she’s supposed to be his daughter or his girlfriend. Which is quite a common mix-up in Hollywood, admittedly.
Alexander: one-year difference
This one is bizarre. Angelina Jolie was born 362 days earlier than Colin Farrell, and still ended up playing his mother in Oliver Stone’s 2004 epic Alexander. Truly horrifying. Yet somehow – after the script, the acting, the runtime and the miserable inclusion of Val Kilmer and Jared Leto – it isn’t even close to being the worst thing about Alexander.
