8/12 ForReel Score | 3.5/5 Stars

My dad picked up pickleball a while ago, and he seemed to have a lot of fun with it. He dutifully attended practises every week, befriended fellow pickleball players, and his spirits seemed elevated. I went into The Dink looking for a similar kind of mindless fun, and it gave me as good a time as a nice pickleball match: low stakes, great players. It's got some likable stars and a pleasant tone, and by combining the underdog and return-to-glory formulas of sports films, it creates a three-dimensional protagonist.

The plot is very simple, but the movie has fun with its characters. We meet Dusty (Jake Johnson), a former tennis hot-shot who lost what could’ve been a life-changing tennis match. His father (Ed Harris) was greatly disappointed, and so had Dusty coach children in his tennis club well into his adulthood. Dusty has an assistant named PJ (Aaron Chen), whom, like most sidekicks in comedies, we are unsure what his duties are.

The character is given a lot of wordy dialogue, but Chen seems unable to match Johnson’s rhythm and timing, so their exchanges often generate dead-air. But in Chen’s defense, the movie needs a lot of keeping up with, because quirky side characters populate the plot. When Dusty injures himself again, Ben Stiller appears as a doctor who directs him to play pickleball to assist recovery. Stiller’s sequence shows us how the sensibilities of an experienced comedic performer can elevate the material. The routine is not very funny (the nervous doctor keeps making amorous jokes, mentioning a sex website, yadda yadda), but Stiller’s mere timing invites uproarious laughter.

In contrast, Harris responds to a lot of dramatic beats with his trademark deadpan line delivery. What’s undeniable about The Dink is that it assembled a great variety of performers, and thus maintains consistent entertainment value. As Dusty tries out pickleball, he encounters Candace (Mary Steenburgen), whom he may or may not eventually catch feelings for. There is also the the sassy coach Gail (Cleo King) and the delirious Judy (Lynne Marie Stewart). The schtick of Gail and Judy using foul language and shaking their bodies got old pretty quickly, but it provided contrast to the surprising maturity of the relationship between Dusty and Candace.

The universal appeal of pickleball is that it is one of the easiest sports to learn and master. It is, as the movie demonstrates, not as draining as tennis, or as (apologies in advance, but) torturously boring as golf. Its simplicity allows the movie to move through necessary tropes fairly quickly, and shift its focus towards the human story.

Jake Johnson had his start in improvisation-based “mumblecore” movies, so even working in a genre shaped by tropes, he provides a certain easy-going naturalism to his character. Veterans Harris and Steenburgen are able to respond to his energy and form interesting dynamics with him, and director Josh Greenbaum knew what the movie should focus on. There’s a great sequence involving Dusty, Candace, and her ex-husband in a country club that examines their relationship with sincerity. Such moments celebrate the kindness and compassion that Dusty embodies, so that he becomes someone we’d naturally root for.

The conflict of the story is that Dusty’s father wants to eliminate pickleball from his club, but Dusty is staunchly against it. This leads to a climax where a famous tennis player is invited to face-off against Dusty. The climactic pickleball match is fairly entertaining, considering how simple the sport is, but the movie employs a ridiculous deus ex machina to grant its hero an unreasonable advantage, and I spent the entire match trying to ignore that decision.

The best thing about The Dink is its conviction to tell a sweet and endearing story about love and friendship when it could’ve easily played like an advertisement for pickleball. I think my dad would like this movie as much as me, which is to say, you won’t exactly grow to love pickleball after The Dink, but you won’t grow tired of it either. It is more than functional as breezy summer entertainment, though if you watch it with your family, you might want to skip the Ben Stiller parts.

Movie Review: Great Players Make “The Dink” Pleasant Entertainment