The Dink
Writer: Sean Clements
Director: Josh Greenbaum
Cast: Jake Johnson, Mary Steenburgen, Aaron Chen, Ben Stiller, Ed Harris
Will 2026 go down in the history books as the year of the cougar? Netflix gave viewers The Boroughs just two months ago, a series partially predicated on the radical idea that in her seventh decade, Geena Davis can still get it; now, Apple TV responds with The Dink, the new film from Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar director Josh Greenbaum, which likewise supposes that Mary Steenburgen is catnip for men 25 years her junior. Both of these arguments are overwhelming on their merits, even if their sources come up short in other ways. At least pop culture is slowly — slooooooooowly — turning a corner in terms of when a middle-aged actress’ sex appeal expires. Let’s take that win.
Winning, of course, is the heart and soul of The Dink, a fall-and-rise sports comedy, with the first part of that clause interred in the story’s past tense. Dustin “The Hammer” Boyd (Johnson) was a child tennis prodigy, the pride and joy of his overbearing father, Chuck (Ed Harris), who — as so many parents his age have done — invested his hunger for glory in his kid rather than his love. A fateful wrist injury sustained through an accident during a high stakes contest with Andy Roddick (playing himself) dashed their dream, though the dream is admittedly Chuck’s more than it is Dustin’s; he just wants his father’s respect. As an adult, Dustin gives tennis lessons at Chuck’s sports club, or he would if he wasn’t so stuck in his past that all he does in each session is regale his pupils with stories of his pro days. It’d be pathetic if Johnson wasn’t so good at finding the nougat center in these sorts of characters, making them more sweet than bitter in their infernal refusal to grow up.
Meanwhile, there’s a plague spreading across the club grounds: pickleball. Chuck wants the sport contained, and ideally kept out of his establishment. Dustin, naturally, is eager to reenter his dad’s graces, and leaps at the first available opportunity to humiliate a pickleballer, in this case Candace (Steenburgen), a recent divorcee squarely in the “trying out new things” phase of her separation. They make a bet: Dustin wins and he bans her from the club. But one thing leads to another, and before long they’re paired in a casual pickleball game at a different club, a personality mismatch that briskly leads to friendship, which subsequently leads to sparks between them. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s a case of mixed signals, the curse of every man-child wallowing in arrested development.
The Dink wants for surprises and invention. This is nothing Johnson hasn’t done before, or frankly built his entire career doing. Dustin carries his baggage in a suitcase from the same knockoff Samsonite set as Peter B. Parker (the Spider-Verse films), Jeff Schwensen (Safety Not Guaranteed), Tim (Digging for Fire), Randy Cilliano (Tag), Eddie Garrett (Win it All), Tommy (Self Reliance), Leif (Ride the Eagle), and especially Nick Miller, his breakout character in The New Girl. On the other hand, there’s something to be said about familiarity and comfort, the last of these words being the unlikeliest for describing a movie where Johnson plays a loser who once upon a time dabbled in being a winner. His routine not only works, but is welcoming. We understand the type of man Dustin is before The Dink begins simply because he’s represented by Johnson; we expect, and accept, the film’s marriage of melancholy and regret with comic banter and occasional slapstick. They’re partly the reason we’re paying the price of admission.
Consequently, we’re paying the price of admission for Steenburgen, too, since the fun of a Johnson performance is in part the fun of his chemistry with his costars. They’re quite the odd couple, though it’s amusing to wonder how they’d get along if time travel existed and we could send Johnson to work with Steenburgen during her days on set with actors and directors like Jack Nicholson, Dudley Moore, and Jonathan Demme; alas, we’re still in the stone ages. Fortunately, they gel wonderfully in the present tense, both positively oozing giddy energy at times, and easygoing camaraderie at others. The Dink withholds sticky confrontations about feelings for its second half, preferring to indulge their breezy rapport until time runs out and it must address its own “will they, won’t they” tension.
Until the film gets to that second half, it rests on funny. None of the jokes, procured by screenwriter Sean Clements, are terribly memorable, mostly because what constitutes a “joke” in the movie tends to be less about what is said and more about how it’s said; The Dink hews toward dramedy, being consistently amusing without leaving an impression with its wisecracks and one-liners. Greenbaum is too preoccupied by Johnson’s innate gifts as an actor’s actor, and in the source of Dustin’s self-doubt and self-sabotage, to put much effort into finding the same bellylaughs he squeezed out of Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s script for Barb and Star; if The Dink feels a tad light on the latter, his heart is in the right place with the former.
