The Dink review: Jake Johnson's Apple TV+ pickleball comedy is kind of cute, but gets tangled in the net

There’s a particular kind of humour that only works for Jake Johnson, best known for playing the unpredictable, wildly insecure and perpetually battered Nick Miller in New Girl. He has a style of stream-of-consciousness rambling, non sequiturs and comic exaggeration that somehow just works. It often held New Girl together whenever the show flagged, and it’s this very thread that holds his latest film, The Dink, together.

The Dink is an amiable, flawed and goofy sports comedy that doesn’t quite top the genre, but is fun enough to make you remember its underdog tale and feel slightly motivated to pick up a racket, for at least a few seconds. Johnson plays Dusty Boyd, who was once a tennis prodigy until an accident derailed his career, or so he says. Now, he is a tennis coach, telling bored children about his glory days at his father’s fancy tennis club, Mount Crest.

His only real friend is the devoted PJ (played by a fabulous Aaron Chen). The pieces seem familiar: A has-been on court, a geeky, deadpan sidekick, a tough father, and the usual “Why don’t you believe in me?” dad discourse that we’re all too familiar with. Yet The Dink, fully aware that it is travelling down a road everyone and their cat has taken before, bends the familiar journey with fun, biting humour and a volley of jokes that keeps the film afloat for most of its runtime.

Dusty has to contend with new changes at the club, one of them being — horror of horrors pickleball, America’s latest obsession, which is posing a challenge to tennis. Pickleball, for the uninitiated, is a kind of discount tennis played with a plastic ball, so you can understand why tennis purists might look down on it. “It’s the coronavirus of sports,” fumes Dusty’s father, Chuck (Ed Harris). The film’s title refers to a strategy too: a dink is a drop shot that forces your opponent back before the ball is feathered over the net.

You can see where this is going.

Chuck has a plan: a duel between a pickleball player and a tennis player. The victor will decide the future of the club. Dusty, desperate to win his father’s approval, crashes and burns again after another injury and has to take up pickleball as therapy. During the process, he strikes up a friendship with Candace (Mary Steenburgen), who is recently divorced and much older than Dusty.

And so, the film follows Dusty as he plays his own version of pickleball with life, trying to come to terms with himself and a past trauma he has conveniently rewritten.

The Dink’s greatest strength lies in the friendship between Dusty and Candace. It is sweet to watch their affection build on the court, through playlists, conversations and the intimacy of watching a film like The Graduate together. But the film quickly drops into cliché when Candace tries to flaunt Dusty to her ex-husband to show him what he is missing. The scene jars with the symphony of the film.

While the relationships and romance are the shining aspects of the film, the central plot, a pickleball showdown to save a country club (very Hallmark, but make it big city), begins to wobble in the last half-hour. Candace is sidelined, and the film loses some of the charm she brings to it. The fun is still there, but it’s getting tangled in the net.

For all its wobbles, the film’s colourful side characters give it a sardonic spirit. There are Candace’s pickleball partners, elderly women who are superb at trash talk, as well as cameos that include even Andy Roddick.

So, if you’re in the mood for a breezy sports comedy and just need some easy laughs, The Dink is for you.