Product Description

Film adaptation of street tough Jim Carroll's epistle about his kaleidoscopic free fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction. As a member of a seemingly unbeatable high school basketball squad, Jim's life centers around the basketball court and the court becomes a metaphor for the world in his mind. A best friend who is dying of leukemia, a coach ("Swifty") who takes unacceptable liberties with the boys on his team, teenage sexual angst, and an unhealthy appetite for heroin -- all of these begin to encroach on young Jim's dream of becoming a basketball star. Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from his mother's mounting concern for her son. He can't go home and his only escape from the reality of the streets is heroin for which he steals, robs and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie, an older neighborhood friend with whom Jim "picked up a game" now and then, is he able to begin the long journey back to sanity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7224 in DVD
• Brand: Team Marketing
• Released on: 2004-10-19
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .0 pounds
• Running time: 102 minutes

Features

• Classic DVD
• Exclusive interviews, highlights, and behind the scenes coverage
• DVD's main menu allow you to jump directly to the action
• Presented in full-screen digital video

Amazon.com
The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realize that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess we're watching might have been helpful. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Leonardo DiCaprio plays a high-school-age Jim Carroll, a New York kid who wears a dirty grin, scoffs at his teachers, reduces his mother (Lorraine Bracco) to tears, and hangs out with a bunch of friends, looking for trouble; when they can't find it, they make it. Early on, the picture offers some fine, flowing scenes of the gang tearing down the street with all the zip and glee of Truffaut kids, and loping and shoving, angular and energetic, across the basketball court. But when Jim discovers heroin-and the film finds a sense of responsibility-the freedom disappears: the latter half becomes a gruelling catalogue of cold nights, blue lips, and scummy needles. DiCaprio gives it everything he's got, but the picture doesn't ask him for much; it isn't interested in his good humor, let alone his good looks. Directed by Scott Kalvert, scripted by Bryan Goluboff, and based on Carroll's own chronicle of his wasted youth, it's all too pleased with itself for getting down into the gutter. The final sequence makes it plain that because Carroll now writes poetry he is cured, and redeemed. That's what he thinks, anyway. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

So-so drug story.
The Basketball Diaries starring Leonardo DiCaprio is a good film about drug abuse but this coming of age drama left me disappointed. DiCaprio is so talented but even his electric performance can't save this dribble. This is a movie you borrow or rent but not buy.

Great Look into Delinquent Behavior
This movie sums up - in a nice little package - how delinquent behavior can manifest itself into crimes. I use it as a teaching tool in my criminology class and highly recommend it to professors and students alike.

REALISTIC
THIS FILM WAS SHOWN TO PEOPLE IN EARLY RECOVERY. THEY THOUGHT IT WAS REALISTIC AND GAVE A VERY GOOD SCENARIO OF RESULTS.