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Basketball Diaries, The
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 19 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 2 votes
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Art/Independent | Drama
Written by:
Bryan Goluboff
Jim Carroll (novel)
Directed by: Scott Kalvert
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 21, 1995
DVD: June 30, 1998
Running Time: 102 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for graphic depiction of drug addiction with related strong violence,sexuality and language
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Lorraine Bracco, James Madio, Patrick McGaw, and Marilyn Sokol
An adapation of Jim Carroll's memoirs of his decent from basketball star to heroin addict while in high school.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Deuces Wild
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
ReelViews James Berardinelli
The tale related here isn't all that original, but the honest presentation lends impact to a wrenching scenario.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Hal Hinson
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.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
[Kalvert] 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.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Matt Zoller Seitz
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.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)
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.
Read Full Review >Empire Darren Bignell
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
A sensationalist grunge festival spiked with dollops of poetry on the sound track.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
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.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The results are more sleazy than insightful.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
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.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
The Basketball Diaries is a weak-tea rendition of Jim Carroll's much-admired cult tome about his teenage drug addiction. Leonardo DiCaprio's committed lead performance deserves a better context than this gloss on the source material.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune John Petrakis
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. [21 Apr 1995]
Boston Globe Jay Carr
It's not boring to watch, but in the end it's too lame and too tame. [21 Apr 1995]
San Francisco Examiner Gary Kamiya
Imagine if "On the Road" ended with Sal and Dean settling down in the 'burbs. Or if the carnal encounters in Henry Miller's "Sexus" were prefaced with admonitions to the reader not to "objectify" women. The Basketball Diaries is a similar travesty: It turns a celebration of outlaw life into a just-say-no cautionary tale that Nancy Reagan would love.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
The Basketball Diaries is a stepped-on product that never scores.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
The Basketball Diaries is a lose-lose proposition. Although it masquerades as a cautionary tale about the horrors of heroin, this epic of teen-age * Angst is more accurately seen as a reverential wallow in the gutter of self-absorption.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Joe Brown
There's little momentum, no real story line, just Carroll's tediously inevitable descent from low to lowest.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
