I'm dinking of ending things
The Dink is a confidently uneven comedy. Is it a sports movie pastiche/parody like Dodgeball? A geriatric hangout comedy? An ’80s throwback nerds vs. preps romp? A lo-fi mumblecore lark? A David Wain-esque anti-comedy? The answer to each is yes, depending on the scene. Not every joke lands, and every actor is aiming for a different tone, but all the different textures kinda balance out like a handful of trail mix.
The film follows Dusty “The Hammer” Boyd (Jake Johnson), a former tennis prodigy whose career never recovered from a busted wrist and a teenage defeat at the hands of his eternal nemesis, Andy Roddick (a good sport here, playing himself). Now in his forties, Dusty coaches unimpressed kids at the snooty country club run by his father, Chuck (Ed Harris), a tennis purist with a vendetta against the pickleball craze overrunning his courts. When his old wrist injury flares up, Dusty’s doctor (Ben Stiller) prescribes the unthinkable — pickleball — and Dusty eventually finds himself partnered with Candace (Mary Steenburgen), with whom he forms an unlikely bond. Just in time for the climax, the film’s threads come together for a high-stakes game of pickleball, with Dusty needing to decide whether to stand by his uptight dad or his fellow dinkers.
The film has DNA from all over the comedy world, but its most direct ancestor is vintage Adam Sandler sports comedy, Happy Gilmore above all: a lovable screwup with a chip on his shoulder stumbles into a sport he used to scoff at, and now he’s gotta win the big one. It’s also the latest in Apple’s growing stable of washed-up-athlete redemption stories, following the golf series Stick and last year’s F1.
Despite being a comedy shapeshifter, The Dink’s texture is quite mild: it changes from scene to scene, but it never gets especially loud. For a movie packed with this many funny people, the big, quotable laughs are scarce; this is more of a steady chuckle than a punchline machine. Director Josh Greenbaum (of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) spreads the wealth across a loaded bench of comic talent. Writer Sean Clements, from the TV world and making his feature debut, also co-hosts the long-running comedy podcast Hollywood Handbook, and that show’s brand of deadpan showbiz satire may explain the script’s occasional swerves into self-parody.
Greenbaum also gives the whole experience a slight sheen of heightened reality, and the cinematography is far less noxious than that of most streaming comedies, which so often arrive flat, overlit, and queasily glossy. Better still, he gets good mileage out of shooting pickleball as if it’s a much more exciting and kinetic sport than it actually is, giving the rallies the kind of breathless, big-match treatment like we’re at Wimbledon. Pickleball has never looked so cool, which is a low bar, I suppose.
What surprised me most about The Dink is how much the script actually cares about these people. Beneath the shenanigans are some genuinely prickly father-son dynamics, the lingering shame of a dream that died decades ago but never got a proper burial, and, best of all, an odd, magnetic, quasi-romantic connection between two very different, winning souls, played by a pair of actors who’d both make my “dream blunt rotation,” as the kids say.
Johnson and Steenburgen share an easy rapport that elevates the material into something authentically charming and does a lot of heavy lifting for a story mostly hitting well-worn beats. The film only briefly entertains a romance spanning the quarter-century age gap between them (complete with a nod to the The Graduate), but the pairing works regardless: Johnson’s slightly awkward, slightly boundary-pushing presence is perfectly countered by Steenburgen’s unassuming warmth.
I’m especially enthused about seeing Johnson getting prominent screen time: I celebrate every chance Johnson gets to play leading man. He was, after all, the muse for Joe Swanberg’s great and ingratiating mumblecore films. The Dink is squarely in his wheelhouse, which I mean as a compliment. “The Hammer” is about halfway between Nick Miller in New Girl and Eddie in Swanberg’s Win It All: grumpy bluster on the surface, big-hearted goober underneath.
It’s a treat to see a comedy give older actors real space, both in its runtime and in its emotional consideration. Beyond Steenburgen, that includes Harris, who’s a hoot as Chuck, not phoning in the role: He brings the flinty gruffness of a Western villain to a man waging a holy war against pickleball and as a dad constantly belittling his son. A few other over-the-hillers show up, including Lynne Marie Stewart and Martin Kove, and they’re not (just) here for the usual old people gags in comedies like these.
Elsewhere in the supporting cast, Dusty’s worshipful sidekick PJ (Aaron Chen) brings something completely different and walks off with nearly every scene he’s in; the Australian stand-up has a shaggy, left-field delivery that put me in mind of Taika Waititi at his most off-the-cuff. The cameos are solid, too, led by Roddick and by John McEnroe, who delivers a self-aware send-up of his own color commentary from the stands (while eating a truly ridiculous slice of pizza).
I’ll concede The Dink never reaches much higher than pretty alright, consistently charming, and professionally assembled. But trifles are okay every now and again! Fittingly, it’s a dink rather than a smash: soft and just effective enough to win the point.
Is It Good?
Good (5/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.