Apple TV is on a hot streak lately with its TV shows, but its original movies are usually horrendous. That continues with The Dink, a comedy about pickleball that’s not funny, since pickleball isn’t as hilarious as the filmmakers think. The film fails to make its case that pickleball, or its narcissism-of-small-differences rivalry with tennis, is in any way interesting. It wastes a cast that’s filled with talented actors.
Jake Johnson stars as Dusty Boyd, an ex-tennis star who, shades of Richie Tenenbaum, had his promising career cut short at a young age; he has a domineering father, played by a Great American Actor (Ed Harris this time). I thought maybe this was a riff on Andre Agassi’s relationship with his own father, but it’s not that compelling; that will have to wait for the upcoming Agassi documentary, also for Apple TV.
Reduced to working as a tennis pro at the club owned by his father, Dusty ends up pulled into the rival world of pickleball, as part of a convoluted plot in which the future of the country club is determined by the outcome of a Big Game at the End.
Also, the 48-year-old Johnson gets into what appears to be a sweet romance with his pickleball partner, 73-year-old Mary Steenburgen. Their unconventional relationship is about the only thing in the movie that’s interesting, but the story ends up dropping that.
The film was directed by Josh Greenbaum, previously better known as a documentarian who made the well-received docs about The Dana Carvey Show and Will Ferrell’s friendship with his old writer friend, Harper Steele, who came out as a trans woman. He also directed the comedy Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, which has a cult audience. He co-directed Strays, the comedy about dogs telling dirty jokes that was my least favorite movie of 2023.
The Dink, which takes its title from the sound a pickleball shot makes, is meant to evoke the sort of silly sports comedies that Ferrell used to star in. There’s some DNA shared with Dodgeball, as we’re reminded when Ben Stiller makes a laugh-free cameo, and Andy Roddick plays himself as Dusty’s old enemy, in a turn that’s not as funny as Lance Armstrong’s appearance in Dodgeball. And there’s John McEnroe’s appearance, which is even worse than most of his other bad movie cameos.
The Dink has too many things going against it, from a lack of good jokes to an over-reliance on hackery. It’s one of those comedies, too common in the streaming era, that spends too much time on people in small roles showing up and riffing, which makes the film’s 100 minutes drag out forever.
This is the first big pickleball movie, which arrives at a time when the pickleball craze is at its tail end, at least as indicated by an indoor pickleball venue that was to open in my suburb before its proprietors ran out of money. Meanwhile, the plot hinges on the pickleball vs. tennis Cold War, which was a big topic two or three years ago. This film should’ve come out in 2024 or not at all.