The Basketball Diaries

The tale related here isn't all that original, but the honest presentation lends impact to a wrenching scenario. more

It's a tough, intense, wrenching picture about drugs and growing up and surviving, driven by a fierce, skinless performance by its star, Leonardo DiCaprio. more

best serves the movie by simply focusing on DiCaprio, who communicates the spirit and blunt truth of the diaries even when the movie keeps trying to soften the blow. more

Kalvert and Goluboff overcome predictability by developing the film's characters and atmosphere instead. The result is a turbocharged ode to the lithe bodies and swaggering souls of boys who believe they're invincible - a glorious love song of youthful self-destructiveness. more

It's an energetic, watchable mess. more

Jim Carroll's dreamy, pseudo-poetic memoir of a misspent New York boyhood - standard equipment for alienated adolescents of the 90s - is predictably re-tooled as an anti-drug message vehicle. more

Without rising star DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg this would have been considerably more turgid and unappealing. But their charm allows sympathy and involvement with the characters, despite their efforts towards self-destruction. more

The movie is unconvincing. At the end, Jim is seen going in through a "stage door," and then we hear him telling the story of his descent and recovery. We can't tell if this is supposed to be genuine testimony or a performance. That's the problem with the whole movie. more

It's more of a pastiche, a montage of brutality, a slow descent into Dante's Inferno until we reach the subbasement of a boy's soul.

Basketball Diaries is an earnest, botched effort to do justice to Carroll's book. Amazingly, though, even with Kalvert's lack of style and vision, the greatness of DiCaprio's performance is undiminished. more

Used to despise Caprio initially, but now he's growing on me. Probably I was not qualified to see how talented an actor is. But I guess I'm progressing with time, at least in that direction. Or maybe it's vice versa. Back to the movie. Oh, hadn't started in the first place!!! The movie entertains as long as it depicts the teenage kiddo activities of Jim and company. It's fun for that part except for the sobby Bobby track in which Leonardo sucks. But the movie sort of descends with his downfall. It tries to portray the frustrations of an addicted teenager and how his relationships are... more

An excellent set of early performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg as well as a captivating story. I was surprised at the brave attitude of the subject matter in the film and how bold it was in doing so. It has a great urban tone to it that really sells the story. more

Unlike the title suggests, luckily this film has little to do with basketball; other than its main characters being on a team and there being several scenes of it. In fact, the Basketball Diaries is the real-life story of Jim Carroll, now a successful writer, who spent his teenage years in Manhattan getting severely messed up on drugs along with a couple of his fellow Catholic schoolmates. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Carroll, in one of his first major roles. His performance in this film was probably somewhat overshadowed by his turn in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? a couple years earlier -... more

A bleak, potent depiction of a young man trying to grasp the pain of life. Teen angst isn't romanticized or melodramatic in this film. It's brutal and agonizing and tragic. It rips right into me, and I could care less about minor technical problems. When a story rings this true, nothing else matters. DiCaprio's mere presence makes the film compelling - his intense, passionate performance is among his best. He's nuanced, fierce and startlingly believable all at once. This isn't standard storytelling. This is a crushingly real, violent and honest movie with a lot to say. It's a coming-of-age... more

WOW!!! A young DiCaprio is very impressive!! It's surreal that he was that amazing at that age (though this was after his Oscar nominated performance in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"). His portrayal of a teenage drug addict is very believable, and very heart wrenching. A young Mark Wahlberg (who later costars w/DiCaprio in his Oscar nominated performance in "The Departed") shines as DiCaprio's drug addicted, foul mouthed friend. This was one of Wahlberg's first big roles, and you can see that only better work is to come from him. Based on the real life of the writer, this drug and sex... more

Amazon Verified Purchase ( What's this? ) Director Scott Kalvert creates a moving and realistic recount of the true story of Jim Carroll, played superbly by Leonardo DiCaprio, a New York City teen who at the height of his high school basketball career, falls victim to drugs and violence in the rough streets. Look for the real-life Jim Carroll who makes a cameo appearance as a crack addict in the scene where young Jim sitting in a back alley listening to the addict preach about his "high" while boiling his fix. Fine supporting performances by the entire cast and a musical score including... more