David Denby

".... Even the formidable Meryl Streep, as a well-born woman who has drigted to the bottom, is stymied. Streep uses a coarse, low, washboard voice and a lurching walk, and she sings, in a bar, with game, tuneless determination, but she can't pull the courageous acting flourishes together into something that seems like a person. Babenco doesn't frame her performance and bring her out. The aura of hopelessness that hangs over Ironweed derives as much from the inept moviemaking as it does from the aimless, dream-tormented lives of the alcoholic bums onscreen."

David Denby
New York, January 4, 1988