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The Basketball Diaries

1995

Scott Kalvert

Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruno Kirby, Lorraine Bracco, Ernie Hudson ...

6.8

20,736

Drama 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 ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Jay Carr Boston Globe	"It's not boring to watch, but in the end it's too lame and too tame"	NEG
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"You leave The Basketball Diaries believing that Leonardo DiCaprio can do anything."	POS
United States	Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times	"[It] is romanticizing the ultimate effects of drug use. It is an accomplishment of sorts to be repellent and glamorizing at the same time, but it is the only accomplishment to which this unfortunate film can lay claim."	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"If there's anything more boring than a juicy parable with a moral at the end, it's the moral without the parable (...) DiCaprio does what he can with the part (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"A roll call of sordid episodes and nasty pranks (...) The star shines, but the movie is hard to watch."	NEU
United States	Hal Hinson The Washington Post	s a tough, intense, wrenching picture about drugs and growing up and surviving, driven by a fierce, skinless performance by its star, Leonardo DiCaprio."	POS

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