Review of The Basketball Diaries (1995) by Caesar M — 22 Nov 2012

The Basketball Diaries (1995) is not initially about the sport itself, but the abuse of drug consumption. The message here falls flat with it excellent cast barely saving the film from being just another "Say no to drugs" service announcement.

The Basketball Diaries recall the true events of author Jim Carroll's falling victim to drugs and seeing his world collapse in front of him. The film has a good moral to send out, but fails to give us deep characters. The film just expects to care about these character because they are just teenagers ruining their life; though skipping over character developments does it moral no favor. Some scenes that were meant to powerful just fall short, like when Leonardo dreams about killing his students and teachers Terminator style, fall flat because of a lack of depth. The dialogue here is odd, just don't expect award winning material from a film that has the line "Time sure fly by when your young and jerking off" in it. The only saving grace come from it cast, especially Leonardo DiCaprio who gives a fantastic dramatic performance. He simply shines in this and in spite the lack of the character development, his good performance is good enough make you care what he's going through. He gives the film one very memorable and powerful film when he begs his mother for money. The rest of the cast is solid as well. Even Mark Wahlberg was good; though he never interest me as an actor (he barely chooses an interesting leading role in my opinion). Every single one the actors have great chemistry with one another making up for the writing shortcoming.

The Basketball Diaries has an excellent cast that makes up for it plot which lack depth. It's solid film with a good message that fails to be as effective as it could have been or as inspiring as it source material.