Basketball Diaries, The

By: Raymond Murray
In-House Review - Jan 25 2012

Based on the autobiographical novel by hipster Jim Carroll, this tawdry drama features a miscast Leonardo DiCaprio as the teenage Jim and follows him form his days as a punkish but promising basketball player and aspiring writer to his steady decscent into a pitiful -addicted loser. A painfully shrill Lorraine Bracco plays his mother - she does not help matters. The film also mishandles the gay subplot (much better in the book) - Bruno Kirby is features as Swifty, Jim's Catholic school basketball coach and resident closet case. The first interaction between him and Jim is a bit creepy, with Swifty over-anxious in inviting the jail-bait back to the house for some "tutoring." Later, in an unbelievable scene, Swifty tries to pay a -addled Jim for a blow job, but instead of compliance, he gets his head smacked against the wall. Later, when the only way for Jim to score dope is to sell his body, he goes to a public rest room where older men pay him for sex. The scene in the film is horribly homophobic. The almost hallucinatory tea room is filled with lingering drag queens, mincing fairies and odious leather men, and when Jim submits to a paid blow job, the camera focuses on his grimacing face - teeth clenched, his face wracked with pain and self-loathing. Homosexuality is seen in such horror as to make addiction and petty thievery look almost righteous in comparison.