The Basketball Diaries Details

This dates from the time when Leonardo DiCaprio was still a promising actor rather than the teenage fantasy icon he has become. Based on the autobiographical writings of Jim Carroll, it attempts to plumb the depths of adolescent despair but, ultimately, only betrays the pop-video limitations of debut director Scott Kalvert's imagination. DiCaprio occasionally comes close to real pathos as the hoop dreamer wallowing in a mire of sex, drugs and squalor, though his misery is founded on cliché and there's no real torment in his pain. Best buddy Mark Wahlberg and desperate mum Lorraine Bracco are more persuasive, but Kalvert is clearly out for impact, not truth.

The precocious Carroll's diaries might have once caused a minor sensation, but their attitudinizing romanticism has palled, and there is little of value to be found in the lower depths as depicted here, in a bio-pic that gives little indication of a speci