Perhaps the funniest moment in The Dink comes when Dusty (Jake Johnson) aka the Hammer, watches The Graduate with Candace (Mary Steenburgen), not realizing it’s 60 years old and already a classic. “That guy with the big nose” sure does have star potential, Dusty — he even got nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. It’s moments like these in Josh Greenbaum’s (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and the upcoming Spaceballs sequel) latest that land best, because they aren’t rooted in a modern fad or joke that requires fluency in the current year’s zeitgeist.
It’s a distinction that makes The Dink a lesson in contradiction, in a way. It’s a film built around the “battle” between pickleball and tennis, a specific tension that feels like a phenomenon that will be associated with this decade at the most, and more like likely only its first half. But the comedic template it follows is much more classic. It lobs jokes at a velocity reminiscent of Airplane!, The Naked Gun, or even the original Spaceballs, but with less intentional construction. Lines from PJ (Aaron Chen), Dusty’s sidekick of sorts, come rapid-fire, but unlike those aforementioned entries into this velocity comedy canon, few are well-formed enough to stick the landing, instead leaving The Dink less memorable than simply a bit of an oddity.
Pickleball’s slightly twee, boomer-coded, faintly ridiculous image makes it a real candidate for the affectionate-curio path, a la Bring It On or Dodgeball — the latter being maybe the most proximate antecedent to The Dink — timeless films built present-tense fads that nonetheless endure because of their commitment to the cornball material. They are films that genuinely document a subculture with nostalgic affection instead of only scratching the surface of its cultural impact. But there are infinitely more examples of films that don’t manage to accomplish this, because reference density is an alluring trap; the more you try to cash in on the collective goldfish memory of modern society, the quicker your art becomes obsolete.
The story goes like this: Dusty was a child tennis prodigy, thanks to intense coaching by his father, and eventually entered the pro circuit and went up against his rival. During the match, he broke his arm in the bathroom (the exact circumstances of said accident are told in different ways throughout the film). Thus ended his professional career, and so we flash forward to the present day, where Dusty is working under his father (Ed Harris) at the local country club giving tennis lessons. With the pickleball people (led by Patton Oswalt) trying to invade the tennis court territory, Harris’ Chuck challenges them to a duel, a method in the club’s handbook for settling issues. Dusty assumes he will be competing for the tennis group, but Chuck has other intentions. Meanwhile, the pickleballers have been winning Dusty over, mostly through the platonic affection of Candace. Of course, as these flicks go — and at risk of spoiling the “climax” — The Dink ends happily for all involved.
In the end, one could wax poetic on the loss of lasting universal art for days, but that’s probably deeper than anyone needs to dive in order to consider a film like The Dink — it is a movie about pickleball, after all, one of the dopier zeitgeist intrustions in recent memory. If you’ve ever played the sport, the film is sure to deliver a few chuckles (knowing what the kitchen is was a real prerequisite this writer didn’t have). And as always, Johnson is playing to his strengths as the lovable grump, a role he has settled into since New Girl and seems completely comfortable trotting out on a regular basis. It’s the perfect flick to throw on while eating dinner or over drinks with your pickleball group, so long as you’re content to forget about it by bedtime. In an age where comforting distractions have more value than ever, maybe that’s more important.
DIRECTOR: Josh Greenbaum; CAST: Jake Johnson, Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, Andy Roddick, Ben Stiller, Chloe Fineman; DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV; STREAMING: July 24; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
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