The idea of a golden age is almost always fiction. But I think it’s objectively true that the studio comedy fell on hard times when Hollywood went all-in on chasing I.P., and it hasn’t recovered. Most of the truly funny general-audience comedies — movies with jokes, basically — seem to have migrated toward television. Or else they’ve been relegated to streaming platforms, where even a good one will never have the cultural impact of a “Bridesmaids” or “The Hangover.” For a comedy to stick, you’ve got to share the laughs with other people.
There are a few recent exceptions, like “Barbie,” “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” and “Naked Gun.” And one of my favorite studio comedies, the lightly absurdist “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” has managed to become something of a cult classic even though it was released during the pandemic. That movie’s director, Josh Greenbaum, has made a few other films since then — the middling talking-dog comedy “Strays,” the excellent documentary “Will & Harper” — but his latest, “The Dink,” returns to the studio comedy formula: a few stars, a goofy premise and some pratfalls and gags.
Unfortunately, this one seems bound to drift out of memory pretty quickly, and not just because it’s going straight to streaming. Written by Sean Clements, “The Dink” has its moments, but they never completely cohere, and the movie struggles to maintain a consistent tone.
“The Dink” stars Jake Johnson as Dusty Boyd, a child tennis prodigy whose career ended inauspiciously after an injury. Now he works as a tennis pro for his father, Chuck (Ed Harris), who owns Mountain Crest, a fancy tennis club. Dusty relives his glory days whenever possible, telling the story to the bored children and tweens he’s supposed to be teaching while his friend PJ (Aaron Chen) hypes him up.
Changes are afoot at the club, because of what Chuck has deemed “the novel coronavirus of sports” and “the decline of humanity itself”: pickleball. Members want more pickleball courts; Chuck doesn’t want to add them. He has devised a plan: a duel, one pickleball player versus one tennis player. Whoever wins determines the future of Mountain Crest.
Dusty is desperate to be chosen as the tennis player, but he is sidelined by another injury, and he reluctantly ends up playing pickleball to keep his form in order while he recovers. His pickleball partner is Candace (Mary Steenburgen), who is recently divorced and several decades Dusty’s senior. But they strike up an unlikely friendship, and Dusty soon discovers that he’s got a lot of lessons to learn before he can become his own man.
The cast of “The Dink” — named for a particular shot in pickleball — is stacked. Ben Stiller, Chloe Fineman, Patton Oswalt and Chris Parnell have minor roles, while the tennis legends Andy Roddick and John McEnroe appear, perhaps improbably, as themselves. Both Johnson and Steenburgen are winningly charismatic, and for a long stretch the film hovers between a buddy comedy and a rom-com, supported by a crew of oddballs in bit parts.
But even Johnson and Steenburgen’s performances can’t paper over the shaky character development that establishes the story’s stakes. We’re told repeatedly that Dusty is unreliable and immature, but from scene to scene it’s hard to tell if that’s really true and he needs to grow up, or if that’s just something his pompous and dismissive father says. Is this a story of arrested development blooming into maturity, or of a man figuring out how to overcome a bad parent?
Similarly, the film slips into a clichéd side plot for Candace — she wants to show her ex-husband what he’s missing — but it’s picked up and then suddenly dropped in a way that’s a little perplexing.
“The Dink” is still watchable, mostly for its characters’ quirky silliness. (Pickleball players may also enjoy the internecine tennis rivalry, too.) But the best studio comedies have always felt a little unhinged, like you had no idea what could happen next. Usually they’re a little transgressive and quotable, with a big heart and characters you want to root for. “The Dink” gets about 70 percent of the way there, but its missing pieces are what make it lackluster.
The Dink Rated PG-13 for some language and a doctor who wants to talk a little too much about certain bodily functions. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Apple TV.
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