The Basketball Diaries

The Basketball Diaries was released in 1995. Leonardo DiCaprio was just coming off of his performance in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.  Lorraine Bracco had been in Goodfellas only five years before. Yet, in this movie, both of their performances were weak. DiCaprio either oversold, undersold or didn't seem to care. He was 21 and had little movie experience though. Bracco was just a throw away mom. And Mark Wahlberg had not yet shed his Marky Mark image, if he ever has.

The book, an autobiography, that the movie is based on, has gotten good, even great, reviews from what I have seen. DiCaprio and Jim Carroll, the author, even look very much alike. But, the movie did not translate well. Carroll's book seems to be about brutally honest young teenage drug use. It does not exactly have a happy ending, since Carroll would go on to move to California and keep doing heroine. The movie on the other hand was destroyed by Hollywood. It tries to make the story a happy one where the main character overcomes, just like in every other movie. It wasn't honest, it was manipulated.

Although the movie didn't live up to my expectations, it wasn't completely horrible. You could still feel what DiCaprio was trying to sell. You could still see the pain in his eyes. It just wasn't worth sitting through for 100 minutes. If you're looking for something about Catholic school boys gone bad, go see The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. If you're looking for something about drugs and the brutality that they cause, go see Requiem for a Dream. Apparently Jim Carroll even disliked the movie. The Basketball Diaries gets a 5 out of 10.