Film Review: The Basketball Diaries (1995)

Few transitions from written word to cinema have disappointed me as gravely as The Basketball Diaries (1995). Adapted from Jim Carroll's underground work recounting his descent into the vortex of heroin addiction, the film is a lamentable misfire.

A book that merited a better adaptation

Although Carroll's chronicle takes place in the 1960s, there is a certain timelessness about it. Excessive attention is not paid to the shifting fads of the moment and the reader is instead left to focus on the more universal themes of degeneration through excess and revitalization through art. Even though The Basketball Diaries is not a period piece, its transition to film would have been better served by placing it within its original time frame. The reason for this is that the life of the heroin addict in Carroll's book is substantially different from what his modern-day counterpart experiences. The junkie of 1965 confronted neither the menace of AIDS nor the modern-day War on Drugs, two things that did not come into prominence until much later. Although, as mentioned previously, the work does treat the timeless themes of dependency and rebirth, setting the story in the New York of the 1990s is likely to lead an audience into questioning factors about which the novel was unconcerned.

The subject of addiction has been handled with more finesse in several other films. Most notable among these are The Man with the Golden Arm (1956), Panic in Needle Park (1971) and Sid & Nancy (1986). The Basketball Diaries does not earn its place among them owing to the amateurish nature of the film itself. Although the performances, particularly those of Leonardo DiCaprio and Lorraine Bracco are strong, they do little to salvage the final product. One can only hope that the passage of time will allow a more gifted director to honor the work of the recently deceased Mr. Carroll.

The Basketball Diaries (1995)
Directed by Scott Kalvert
Color
103 minutes