Overview
- The Dink, which begins streaming on Apple TV on Friday, is a sports comedy about a fallen teenage tennis prodigy who is drawn into pickleball and forced to rethink his ego.
- Critics praise Jake Johnson and Mary Steenburgen for their chemistry and the film’s warm intergenerational relationship at its core.
- Reviewers say the movie, directed by Josh Greenbaum and written by Sean Clements in his feature debut, leans formulaic and lacks the bigger laughs and frenetic energy of classic sports comedies.
- Several critics note the film underuses pickleball in its match sequences and gets its sharpest gag from a tennis-related joke and celebrity cameos by Andy Roddick and John McEnroe.
- The film lists Ben Stiller as a producer and in a supporting role, has earned generally positive early scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and taps into the wider cultural rise of pickleball as a backdrop for its modest, character-driven story.