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Customer Reviews of The Basketball Diaries

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jim Carroll, real life poet and ex-junkie. Carroll and his friends start off averagely enough as a group of lower class punks out looking for cheap thrills. And though their after school lifestyle is less than admirable, they do take their basketball seriously and are stars of their high school team. Carroll also takes his writing seriously, and some of the poetry in the movie is pretty impressive, I must say.

Carroll and Co. are not exactly characters you sympathize with. Before they even descend into hardcore drug use, they're already robbing rival basketball teams and committing other assorted acts of selfishness. Their hospitalized friend Bobby was such a creep in his pre-cancer days that I honestly didn't feel anything at all when he finally died. His friends' post-funeral drunken eulogies of him being caught by a priest in the school bathroom during the sticky finale of oral sex made me wonder if the purpose of this revelation was to move me to applaud the jerk's death.

However, the purpose of this film was less about character integrity as it was about life's downward spiral brought on by drug use. And it was in this capacity that the film did an outstanding job, better than any other I've seen. DiCaprio's cold turkey and relapse scenes were excellent, and MUCH more accurate than the ones in "Trainspotting", which just showed some kid sweating and screaming at a few comically stupid hallucinations.

As someone who's seen this happen, I can attest to the reality of the desperation, crime, poverty, hopeless addiction, and the complete self-destruction that comes with cocaine and heroin that this movie displays. "Traffic" fell slightly short of showing how much drugs had affected Michael Douglass' family, but had no choice due to the multi-perspective design of the movie. "Blow" simply glorified drugs and lionized a scumbag drug dealer. "Basketball Diaries" is a true story that is probably similar to the stories of many others. Learn as much as you can from this movie.

A gritty, realistic film with wonderful acting performances.
"The Basketball Diaries" is a gritty, uncompromising look at a basically good guy's decent into heroin hell. The cast, headed by Leonardo DiCaprio, is superb; the screenplay doesn't pull any punches. Realistic, shocking, eye-opening, the film gives DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg the chance to display their true talents and really ACT -- these fellows do a terrific job because it all looks so REAL. What a great film with an ending I guarantee you won't expect -- connoisseurs of fine films and DiCaprio fans should check it out -- this is a real movie with a real script and real acting, and the characters and storyline aren't larger than life. They're real as life, and that's not something you see on TV every day. END

Those are the people who died.......
Jim Carroll's autobiographical life story is the basis for this cult classic of the early 90's. Leonardio DiCaprio plays Jim Carroll a poet writing basketball star at a Catholic prep school in Manhatten who's future comes tumbling down when he gets addicted from glue sniffing to heroin. Mark Wahlberg co stars as Mickey his partner in crime as they skip school and do drugs, Jim realizes his future of becoming a pro basketball player are gone when he sees a local kid that he used to run with that decided to stay clean makes it to college ball. Eventually his mother kicks him out and he is saved by a black preacher an ex drug user from the streets takes him in. A powerful story about addiction and the negative affects it has on one's dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio's performance was amazing & makes you wonder how accurate it was of Carroll. The soundtrack also is amazing, essential to collection & a must see film.