For the New Girl fans I’m gonna let you in on a secret. There are two Jake Johnsons. The one you know is the comedy star of The Dink. But there’s another one, who makes amazing movies with Joe Swanberg, that secretly is one of the more fascinating actors working today. While I enjoy Dink Jake Johnson, this movie is a reminder that this Jake might not be as interesting a leading man as everyone was hoping he would become. In spite of those short shorts he shows off on the tennis court.
Or maybe pickleball court? But not if Dusty “The Hammer” Boyd (Johnson), tennis “legend,” has anything to say about it. Despite his best bud PJ (Aaron Chen) propping him up, Dusty’s living off his brief phenom rise in tennis, only to be thwarted by an Andy Roddick driven wrist injury. When Dusty’s dad Chuck (Ed Harris) decides he wants pickleballers out of the elite tennis club, Dusty tries to win his father’s affections by winning the club championship against the old tennis players. He succeeds, but hurts his wrist again. Dr. Stone (Ben Stiller) prescribes pickleball as a fast rehab so Dusty can win his father’s affections. On the DL, he joins a club where he’s paired with Candace (Mary Steenburgen) as a doubles pickleball partner to teach Dusty why “The Hammer” persona doesn’t really work in this sport.
The best thing The Dink has going for it is throwing a host of great actors and comedic performers at Jake Johnson and letting the scenes just unfurl. The wonderful foursome of Johnson, Steenburgen, Lynne Marie Stewart, and Cleo King I could have watched 20 minutes of in some sort of round robin tournament, trash talking each other with very harsh epithets I wasn’t expecting. The scripted jokes are the variety that end up grating over time: a lot of explaining why a joke is funny because of a reference made or something like that. I wish the movie had the guts to just let Aaron Chen wax poetically longer about his relationship with the USS Alabama, or Dr. Stone talking about his dating apps conquests, one after another, while Johnson tries to get a word in or two and react in his natural wiseass horror. Or, completely ditch the pickleball thing and let Swanberg Johnson show up and have a longer more interesting relationship with Mary Steenburgen, the best parts of this movie that shocked me with how well it worked. When The Dink is just hanging out and not wrapped up in its own plot mechanics, the movie generates its best chuckles and even big emotional moments.
In fact, I would argue that The Dink’s hook is actually its weakness. While I appreciate Ben Stiller doing Jake Johnson a solid, his presence reminds us immediately that Dodgeball is this movie’s target, which it never comes close to. The movie’s main arc is generational battles, siding emotionally with the pickleball players. That means you can’t lean into the silly parts of the sport, and do their version of Dodgeball, which totally would have worked: the 20 minutes of random adversaries for Dusty/Candace shows what the movie could have been. Instead, it tries to manufacture a daddy issues story that never really works, sucking any energy out of the movie till we get away from the main tale and back with Jake and Mary and their weird two-stepping adventures, or Aaron Chen searching for a new love in fascinating new places.
There’s a great comedy in The Dink somewhere, but as is, its forgettable fare. For the New Girl fans, that sucks, I’m sorry. But for people like me, there’s a new Joe Swanberg movie coming out with Jake Johnson this year, that looks bangin! I’d encourage you to see some new sides to your TV show boyfriend you thought you knew.