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I went to see Mamma Mia! recently, primarily to watch Meryl Streep, widely regarded as the greatest actress of her generation, do the splits while jumping on a lumpy bed wearing age-inappropriate denim coveralls. It was quite a sight to behold. Is that what 59 bounces like?

Despite its summer box office success the movie, just like the stage version, with its spangled jumpsuits, frenetic rendering of ABBA hits and forced Greek village hilarity, has given many critics a chance to be their most savagely funny. The most notable was Anthony Lane, who wrote in The New Yorker that, "The legal definition of torture has been much aired in recent years, and I take Mamma Mia! to be a useful contribution to that debate."

Mr. Lane gleefully trounced Ms. Streep's co-star Pierce Brosnan's painful attempts to sing: "Anyone watching Brosnan in mid-delivery will conclude that he has recently suffered from a series of complex digestive problems, and that the camera has, with unfortunate timing, caught him at the exact moment when he is finally working them out."

And yet Mr. Lane - like most other critics - was gentle with Ms. Streep, whose performance, which opens with her writhing on a cobblestone floor singing, "Mamma Mia, here I go again" is, well, let's just say it's not Oscar material.

Never mind. Ms. Streep, nominated for 14 and winner of two Oscars and countless other awards, has been so uniformly excellent in her craft all these years that even when she chooses to appear in a very silly movie doing very silly things (although yes, she can sing), she is going to get the benefit of my doubt.

Mamma Mia! may be practically content-free, but it still allows her to demonstrate one formula for middle-aged female fun: Have the courage to be a fool! Try something new! Dare your critics to call your bluff! Get out your old dancing clothes! (Although let's hope they fit.)

For this and other reasons, Meryl Streep is one of my role models, and while I don't go around wondering WWMD (What Would Meryl Do), I have always been struck by her apparent triumph of having pulled off a decent and admirable private life along with a spectacular career.

What's not to admire about her? At 59, she's beautiful, intelligent and elegant, a Yale-educated actor who has raised four children, none of whom has yet landed in jail, and stayed married for 30 years to sculptor Don Gummer (of whom she once said, "I'd be dead, emotionally at least, if I hadn't met him").

She has managed to become the universal queen of acting with nary a breath of scandal. Take that, Elizabeth Taylor (old-style scandal queen, multiple marriages, bloated, blingy appearance). Take that, Britney Spears (new-style scandal princess, many drugs, no underwear, enough said).

I rooted around in some old interviews with Ms. Streep, and was reminded that even for her, roles dried up in her 40s, as she was perceived to be over-the-hill.

But she roared back in her 50s. In fact, my favourite acceptance speech of hers was when she won the Emmy in 2003, at 54, for her multi-role performance (including that of a rabbi) in the HBO series Angels in America: "There are some days when even I think I'm overrated, but not today."

And then there's what she has said about the old work versus family debate: "There's no road map on how to raise a family: It's always an enormous negotiation. But I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can't imagine eschewing one for the other." (No gushing on about how having children "changed her life," just a sense of normal commitment to the complicated job of raising them.)

Some may see her as a bit too careful and rehearsed on and off the screen, but in recent years Meryl Streep has become more political, stepping up to bash the Bush administration, not just about the war in Iraq, but as she told The New York Times: "Everything pushed me over the edge! The quiet dismantling of environmental regulations. The phoniness of No Child Left Behind. Everybody should be getting up and making a big, fat noise."

I saw her interviewed recently on MSNBC, by a younger woman gushing about her energetic Mamma Mia! performance, who said, as if Ms. Streep should be practically bedridden in late middle age, "You don't have to put yourself out there."

But Ms. Streep firmly batted it back, saying she had been "happy every single day" shooting a demanding performance that involved her running around like a dervish, dancing and singing: "Nobody asks this much of women my age."

I always get irritated when I see movies trying to capture or exploit female bonding. They generally go for the squeal - women screaming, "Are you getting any?" at each other - and not the zeal, the sheer amount of goodwill and energy women have for and in each other's company as they help each other navigate through life.

This movie is no exception but it will drag in women by the truckloads because ultimately it's a way, especially for women of a certain age, to have a good time, to say to themselves, "If Meryl Streep can have this much fun, then so can I."

In fact, I'm devoting a few minutes today to jumping on my own bed.