Carrie Rickey

“I don't like Love Child much, but it contains one gem: Amy Madigan's raw-nerve performance as the shiftless, cussin' Florida 19-year-old whose passive aggressive cycle first leads her to be her kid cousin's accomplice in a botched armed robbery and then to erupt, violently, in prison where she's been sentenced to the max….

“….. She's accessory to a crime but too naive about the judicial system to accept her punishment, which is cruel and unusual and meted out by a judge convinced that she's a criminal who's never been caught before. Guilty until proven guiltier. This situation gives the freckle-faced Madigan plenty of scope for her acting imagination. Hysterical anger is the naif's only self-protection, which exacerbates her sensitivity, no, her rawness, to both the miscarriage of justice and the unwanted homosexual advances she encounters in prison. Everything about her adjustment to life behind bars is compelling in a TV-drama sort of way, but the networks probably would have censored MacKenzie Phillips's pawing, raging bull-dyke performance as J.J., sister inmate….

“…. Madigan and Phillips are fine and affecting, but the story is more or less I Want to Live! from the embryo's point of view. P.S. I cried.”

Carrie Rickey, Village Voice, October 26, 1982