Apple TV’s The Dink has a great comedy concept, a committed Jake Johnson performance, and enough genuinely funny observations about pickleball culture to keep the game competitive. Director Josh Greenbaum understands that pickleball is simultaneously ridiculous, addictive, welcoming, and filled with players who believe a plastic ball with holes deserves the dramatic intensity of Wimbledon.
The movie gets plenty of laughs from that contradiction. But its constant need to be random eventually becomes exhausting. Add the lazy, borderline offensive treatment of its sole Asian character, and this enjoyable sports comedy ends up feeling disappointingly whelming.
Pickleball Is Fun, Funny, and Weirdly Cinematic
Sean Clements’ screenplay has plenty of fun poking at pickleball, tennis, and the bizarre hostility between people who play two sports that involve hitting a ball over a net. The random innuendos, colorful metaphors, unnecessarily dramatic terminology, and absurd situations will get most viewers to chuckle. Even when a joke does not produce a full laugh, the sheer confidence with which the cast delivers it usually earns a smile.
As someone who regularly plays pickleball, I can attest that it is much more fun than it looks. It is fast, strategic, competitive, and social in a way that can turn a casual game into a weekly obsession. It also absolutely earns the jokes made at its expense. A sport with a “kitchen,” “dinks,” and grown adults aggressively debating whether a plastic ball crossed a painted line is begging to be roasted.
Cinematographer Carl Herse captures what makes the game exciting without sensationalizing it beyond recognition. The camera follows the speed, positioning, reactions, and rhythm of a rally, making pickleball look as fun onscreen as it feels to play. The film occasionally embraces classic sports-movie grandeur, but it never needs to pretend these characters are swinging flaming paddles during the final battle for Earth. The game itself provides enough movement and personality.
Fortune Feimster and her on-court partner are also a little too accurate as a specific breed of pickleball player. Anyone who spends enough time around public courts will recognize these people. Pickleballers can be welcoming, intensely competitive, socially bizarre, and completely unforgettable, sometimes within the same game. They are characters, and The Dink knows it.
Jake Johnson Makes Wounded Arrogance Weirdly Lovable in The Dink
Jake Johnson commits completely to Dusty Boyd, a former tennis prodigy still emotionally living inside the version of his life that never happened. Dusty is arrogant, petty, dismissive, and frequently dickish, but Johnson keeps enough hurt behind his eyes to prevent the character from becoming unbearable. He rides the line between deeply wounded douchebag and vulnerable asshole with impressive precision.
That vulnerability allows Dusty to get away with behavior that should make the audience abandon him. Johnson understands that Dusty’s ego is not confidence. It is scar tissue. His swagger, insults, and desperate attachment to tennis all protect a man who cannot admit how badly he still wants his father’s approval. Johnson never loses the comedy, but he gives the ridiculousness an emotional foundation.
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Mary Steenburgen brings elegance, warmth, and logic to Candace. She becomes the grounded presence the movie desperately needs whenever Dusty and everyone around him tumble into competitive insanity. Steenburgen does not play Candace as a magical cure for Dusty’s problems. She makes her observant, emotionally intelligent, and capable of challenging him without turning every interaction into a lecture. Her composure also makes her comic timing hit harder because she can puncture the surrounding foolishness with one perfectly measured response.
The wounded parental relationship between Dusty and Chuck already contains enough resentment, disappointment, and unspoken affection to support an entire movie. Chuck’s dynamic with Candace opens another emotionally promising lane. These relationships give The Dink something real to play with whenever the screenplay stops frantically reaching for another punchline.
Controlled Absurdity Beats Random Noise
John McEnroe’s appearance demonstrates exactly how this movie’s absurd comedy should work. The gag starts from a recognizable public persona, keeps escalating through surprising associations, and becomes funnier through repetition. It is random without being meaningless. Each return builds upon the previous joke, contributes to the moment, and stays within the heightened reality of the film.
Unfortunately, The Dink does not always understand why that running gag works. Too often, the screenplay seemingly activates a random-word generator and expects the shock of an unrelated noun to carry the joke.
A few of these left-field lines are funny. After several more, the randomness starts feeling desperate. Instead of surprising the audience, it breaks the movie’s reality and reminds us that actors are reciting strange combinations of words because someone wanted to manufacture a quotable joke.
Absurd comedy still needs internal logic. McEnroe’s running gag has structure, escalation, and payoff. The weaker jokes simply arrive, announce how weird they are, and disappear. The Dink takes that swing a few too many times.
Aaron Chen Deserved Far Better Than PJ
The film’s treatment of Aaron Chen is its biggest unforced error. PJ is an extremely subservient Asian man who worships Dusty, possesses almost no agency, and has been so thoroughly desexualized that his attraction appears directed toward objects, particularly an aircraft carrier. This is not a fresh subversion of an Asian stereotype. It is the stereotype with some random nouns taped onto it.
Chen deserves tremendous applause for making such a weak role mildly funny. His timing, awkward physicality, and complete commitment rescue individual moments that have very little working in their favor. However, a funny Asian performer successfully squeezing laughs from demeaning material does not absolve the material. It only proves the film wasted Aaron Chen.
The problem becomes worse because PJ is effectively the movie’s sole Asian character. He is not merely weird, submissive, or sexless among a wide range of Asian personalities. He carries all of that representation alone. In a film that finds surprising vulnerability within Dusty’s arrogance and gives its older characters full romantic, athletic, and emotional lives, reducing PJ to an obedient Asian accessory feels especially lazy.
The Dink is A Fun Rally With Too Many Unforced Errors
The Dink is a fun time and an affectionate commentary on the pickleball sensation. It understands why people fall in love with the game, why tennis loyalists mock it, and why its community generates so many wonderfully strange personalities. The cast commits, the matches look great, and several jokes land exactly where they should.
However, the movie too frequently mistakes randomness for cleverness, and its treatment of Aaron Chen’s character leaves a particularly nasty aftertaste. There is a warmer, sharper sports comedy inside The Dink, especially within Dusty and Chuck’s damaged relationship, but the film keeps interrupting it to yell another unrelated word.
There are enough laughs to finish the match, but the lazy jokes and borderline offensive handling of its only Asian character may have viewers switching back to reruns of Ted Lasso or Shrinking. Which is why I give The Dink a
5/10
The Dink premieres globally on Apple TV on July 24, 2026.
Ready to grab a paddle and see how The Dink serves up pickleball comedy? Will Jake Johnson’s wounded arrogance win you over? Can its stacked cast keep you laughing when the jokes sail out of bounds? Share your thoughts in the comments or @me.
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