SerpApi.Org
Pickleball is a sport that isn't just waiting to be satirized; it comes pre-satirized, with its adorable little paddles, fun-sized court, and participants who look awfully determined while playing a game that requires precious little speed, strength, size, quickness, or natural athletic ability. That's why it’s all the more disappointing that The Dink is so pleasantly undemanding and rarely that funny. The movie pulls a lot of its comedic punches, as if it were too scared to insult a pickleball-loving audience composed of many older adults. That’s a shame because director Josh Greenbaum demonstrated in his first two big-screen efforts, the awesome Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and the more-filthy-than-funny Strays, that he knows how to deliver full-throttle laughs.
In The Dink, the jokes land like faint echoes of better comedies, while its riskiest moment, a potential May-December romance between the film’s lead characters — played by 48-year-old Jake Johnson and 73-year-old treasure Mary Steenburgen — feels less brave than it does odd and tentative. The result plays like something Will Ferrell turned down and Chevy Chase is too old to pull off, while the brief appearance of Ben Stiller only reminds us that 2004’s DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story did a much better job leaning into the absurdity of its sport.
Coming on the heels of Ferrell’s tepid Netflix series, The Hawk,The Dink makes you wonder why sports comedies have suddenly felt so toothless and whether the almighty streaming algorithm is to blame. Even the film’s attempts to “go there,” as in the opening scene featuring the tired laugh-getter of profanity-spewing kids, are perfunctory. These particular nine-year-olds are stuck listening to their tennis teacher, Dusty Boyd (Johnson), recount his earlier days as a tennis prodigy whose career was derailed when a young Andy Roddick sabotaged their match, leaving Dusty with a broken wrist and broken dreams. Dusty is now reduced to giving lessons at the tennis club owned by his father, Chuck (Ed Harris, a great dramatic actor and an okay comedic one) and enduring the hilariously fawning, sycophantic accolades of his best friend, PJ (Aaron Chen, giving the film’s funniest performance).
Getting Dusty onto the pickleball court requires some storytelling gymnastics, starting with Chuck’s quest to stop his tennis club from expanding into a pickleball facility. To avoid the issue going to a vote they are destined to lose to a pickleball contingent led by Skip (the priceless Patton Oswalt), Chuck invokes a clause in the club’s charter allowing the issue to be settled in a tennis match. But Chuck will only let his son play in the match if he wins an upcoming tourney. When Dusty wins the tourney, then breaks his wrist while celebrating, his doctor (Stiller) tells him to take up pickleball to help with his rehab. If that sounds like a clunky assemblage of obstacles, it often plays that way on screen.
Screenwriter Sean Clements attempts to put a little meat on the bones of his conventionally constructed story by making Chuck a disapproving parent who considers his son a “hopeless loser.” Dusty's yearning for his father's approval, combined with his eventual realization of why he lost that long-ago match to Roddick, gives him a few low-grade emotional and physical hurdles to overcome. But we're here for the laughs and those hoping for a takedown, even a loving one, of this bizarrely popular sport will be disappointed. Aside from Chuck calling pickleball the “coronavirus of sports,” and Skip reminding club goers that pickleball is played by Taylor Swift, while tennis was played by the Menendez brothers on the day they murdered their parents, there’s not much zing to the zingers. Instead, Greenbaum prefers the low-hanging comedic fruit of sassy older ladies who a reluctant Dusty meets on the pickleball court.
One of them is Candace (Steenburgen), a divorcée who needed a hobby and is happy to teach Dusty the game’s rules. Greenbaum (whose next film is the please-be-good sequel to Spaceballs) tries to give Steenburgen a real character to work with. But her love of country music and fear of running into her ex-husband, Mitch (Cobra Kai’s Martin Kove), never really add much except running time. Although, it does set up The Dink's weirdest turn. After Dusty poses as Candace's new boyfriend to impress Mitch at a local honky tonk, he makes romantic advances to the much older woman. While the movie is peppered with clues that this may happen — including a late-night viewing of The Graduate — the movie is not equipped to tackle such an idea. So instead, it backs away from it, wanting credit for introducing the notion, then bailing out before it becomes too much for the movie to handle.
Compared to those who’ve taken dodgeballs to the groin or sprinted down a racetrack in their underwear while yelling “Help me, Tom Cruise,” Johnson comes off as no more than an amusing second choice to lead a sports comedy. Instead, The Dink's biggest laughs come during the obligatory final match between Dusty and Roddick when another tennis legend (whose name will not be spoiled here) gives play-by-play while eating increasingly large pieces of food. Those brief moments suggest what The Dink might have been but decided not to be, trading on likability more than sharp humor or outrageous gags. But considering how golfing, car racing, ice skating, and bowling have all been spoofed to great success, a quasi-sport begging to be eviscerated should have been a satirical slam dunk. Instead, The Dink is, itself, an easy dink that still ends up in the net.
