The Dink

The Dink is pickleball’s very funny new entry into the classic genre of sports comedies. In the new film, Jake Johnson stars as a washed-up tennis underachiever whose loyalties become divided after befriending a pickleball player played by Mary Steenburgen. It’s got a contest with huge stakes and a surprising dose of heart, and the jokes make it over the net. If you want more breezy fun flicks, check out these episodes: In 'Power Ballad,' Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas hit all the right notes https://www.npr.org/2026/06/04/nx-s1-5844696/in-power-ballad-paul-rudd-and-nick-jonas-hit-all-the-right-notes Fun movies you may have missed https://www.npr.org/2026/05/12/nx-s1-5816384/fun-movies-you-may-have-missed Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support Pop Culture Happy Hour+ https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  What do you call like a collection of pickleball courts?

• 0:17Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 0:17Speaker 03

  Courts? I don't know.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Courts?

• 0:19Speaker 02

  A barrel?

• 0:22Speaker 03

  A jar, a jar of pickleballs.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  The very silly sports comedy is a classic genre. Major League, Happy Gilmore, dodgeball. And now that pickleball is everywhere, it only makes sense that it has its very own silly comedy. The Dink features a washed up underachiever, a looming contest with huge stakes, and a surprising dose of heart. I'm Linda Holmes, and joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is my fellow host, Aisha Harris. Hello, Ayesha.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  Hello, Lynda.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  And also with us is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Jean Demby. Hello, Jean.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  What's good, y'all? So glad to be here.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  I love to have you here to talk about other things, but especially sports.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  So the movie The Dink features Jake Johnson as Dusty. He was once a promising young tennis player, but after an injury years ago during a match against Andy Roddick, who appears as himself, Dusty's professional tennis aspirations were doomed. Now, he kicks around the tennis club owned by his controlling dad, played by Ed Harris, giving lessons to kids and hating his life. The club becomes embroiled in a conflict between its tennis establishment and the upstarts, who want to play the one game Dusty respects the least, pickleball. He meets a pickleball player named Candace, played by Mary Steenburgen.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  Hey, you should play again. You could be a great pickleballer.

• 1:47Speaker 05

  A great pickleballer? I pass.

• 1:49Speaker 04

  Why? Just because the name sucks and it looks kind of dorky and most people out there are out of shape and have never played a sport before?

• 1:56Speaker 05

  Yes, those are the exact reasons.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Surprisingly, the two become friends, and Dusty's loyalties are soon divided. A match looms in which pickleball and tennis will fight it out, and Dusty may have to choose between his father and his new pals. The movie is streaming on Apple TV. Ayesha, I'm going to start with you. How did you like The Dink?

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Well, I don't think I'm particularly known for my sports commentary or sports thoughts, ever, so it's fun to be on this episode. But I do enjoy a fun sports movie, and this is fun. I found it utterly delightful. You know, as someone who remembers having to play, weirdly enough, I remember having to play pickleball as like a section of our gym class.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Are you serious?

• 2:39Speaker 03

  Yes. We did have to play it in gyms, so, and I haven't, hadn't thought about it until years later, when it suddenly became this thing. And I was like, I remember having to play this in high school. I've marveled at the fact that this has become such a, especially among millennials, such a big sport that people love to play. And I have not picked up a pickleball racket since. So it was fun to kind of watch the Jake Johnson character slowly become like less and less put off by this. But all of the feelings that he has, as that clip says, like, it's a dumb name. It's a silly name, and it's like low effort. You can understand why people, once they reach a certain age, tend to flock to it. But it also has a respect for the, for the sport. So I enjoyed it.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  I thought it was pleasant and very, just like lots of funny little moments and asides that kept this movie. It never felt long to me. Like, it moves along, and it's fun and delightful. That is, that is the word I would describe for this movie, for me.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. How about you, Jean? What'd you think?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  So now I'm like, wait, why is it called pickleball?

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I thought this was an incredibly dumb movie, and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible. Like, there were so many stupid jokes in this movie that I cracked out loud laughing at. There are all these, like, I should just alluded to this, all these like silly asides that don't have anything to do with anything, just sort of like these weird digressions that people go on. I have a lot of time for Jake Johnson. I have a lot of time for Mary Steenburgen. They have really great chemistry, I guess, which is not surprising, because I think Mary Steenburgen probably has good chemistry with everybody.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  But one of the things that sort of was odd to me, and it's not a complaint necessarily, but like, it felt kind of sitcom-y. Like, it felt like there, it felt, this felt like a, like a really nice sitcom stretched out to 90 minutes. But it didn't feel stretched out, and it didn't feel like it overstayed its welcome. But it felt like it had the rhythms of, it didn't feel very like movie-ish to me. Right? It felt like a really silly TV series about a tennis club. You know what I mean?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And this, again, that's not a complaint. Like, it was so much fun to watch this. During a big sports moment, they just cut out all the sort of TV and movie filigree and just like let you hear the sound of them playing pickleball and show Andy Roddick and Jake Johnson playing pickleball against each other just at regular speed. And it is so funny, because it is so ridiculous. And the sound of that pah-pah sound is so dumb, it's like.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  It's like ASMR.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. There's just all these like little moments in the movie that I just genuinely chuckle at. I enjoyed this a lot.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I enjoyed this a lot, too. I was a little caught off guard, because I tend not to have a lot of patience with kind of man-child anger ball movies, where the whole joke is that the guy starts off as like resentful, ticked off, yelling at everybody because he's frustrated with his life and his life's never been satisfying. This is a guy that like, I feel like guys like Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell and guys like that have played this kind of guy a lot. And I tend to get really frustrated with it. What I love about it, and you can hear a little bit of it in that clip, what I think works so well is that as soon as he meets Mary Steenburgen, Candace absolutely refuses to take him seriously at all, to take his like grumpiness and complaining.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  They don't really become like immediately antagonistic. She just treats it like it's funny that he's being so ridiculous about it. And when she reacts that way, he reacts that way back, and he starts to laugh back. And very quickly, they're kind of making each other laugh. And so it makes sense that they're becoming friends. Whereas often in a movie like this, you see the antagonism, you see the fighting, and you see like everybody's mad at each other. And then all of a sudden, it's like there's some kind of revelatory moment where like all of a sudden, now they're friends. You can see from the beginning, she just acts like, come on, man. Like, what, what are you doing with your lousy attitude and your everything like that?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  And I think it changes the chemistry of the movie so much to have him pretty quickly get away from his sort of sour mood toward everything.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  Calm down.

• 6:46Speaker 06

  No one thinks I'm freaking out.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  You're being a sore loser. You're being a sore loser. Everybody.

• 6:51Speaker 06

  They'll say no.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  I hate this stupid game. I'm leaving.

• 6:56Speaker 06

  Hey, kid.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  What?

• 6:58Speaker 06

  You want a rematch?

• 6:59Speaker 05

  Yes, I'd like that opportunity.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  He meets these different pickleball players, and he kind of likes them, and they kind of like him. And he comes to realize that maybe he could have fun doing this. And of course, it's got, you know, a bunch of really fun people in the supporting cast. You know, we mentioned Andy Roddick as himself. This is also maybe my favorite use of John McEnroe as himself, which is really kind of, it's a little bit surreal.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  You mean progressively larger?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  Are you reading off of something?

• 7:35Speaker 05

  I'm just reading the expressions of the crowd and the body language of the players. Now Dusty's got a glimmer of hope. Sometimes that's all you need.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Patton Oswalt is in it, and I think is very funny. Ed Harris is really Ed Harris-ing it up for you.

• 7:51Speaker 07

  Pickleball.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 7:53Speaker 07

  And now we'll coronavirus of sports.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I had a great time at this, and I kind of felt like, this is like the best case scenario for this movie to me. Definitely.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree, yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  We've got a lot more to talk about. We'll be right back after this break.

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• 9:33Speaker 03

  And we're back. Well, I think it's interesting, Jean, that you said this felt like a sitcom stretched to 90 minutes, because I watched this not long after having to watch The Hawk, which is another sports comedy, but that is in sitcom form. 10 episodes, Will Ferrell doing his Will Ferrell thing that he's done in a lot of other movies, like Talladega Nights and whatever. And our complaint on that episode that we did about that, and Ronald Young Jr., our, our guest actually made the point, and I agree with him, is that that could have been a movie. It would have been way more digestible as a movie and trying to stretch it out. The joke ratio, the joke density ratio was incredibly off in a way that here, when you

• 10:15Speaker 03

  have like an under two hour movie, you get all those jokes in. You get, you get a funny moment where, as the Dusty character is heading to the pickleball courts for one of the first times, or the first time, you, you hear someone just rudely say like, hey, ho, ho, new guy, fresh pickle. And it's just like.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  It's just like, that stuff is fun. And when you have that, plus you have these very, like, yes, the Steenburgen and Jake Johnson, like, the dynamic there is just so, I don't think we see these enough. Like, I love movies and TV shows where you see genuine friendships between, like, a generational divide and the fact that she's, you know, decades older than him, but they have this mutual respect for each other, like, that grows and grows as they bond over the sport. It was just so lovely to see, and I don't think you see enough of that. And I think it also helps that Jake Johnson is such an affable character. And he's not, he's playing a man-child, but he's also, like, not dumb.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  He has his hangups and he has his very insecure and he's got daddy issues. But he's not stupid, right? He, like, he, he's, has, like, a emotional intelligence to him that needs to be tapped into, and he finds that through the Candace character and through these other, these older women who he's, he's playing pickleball with. It's just, I don't know, there's just something, it didn't have to be this good, and it is this good, if that makes sense.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I say it felt like a sitcom, I don't mean, like, that it felt like it was stretched out. It was more like the cons of jokes they were making, right? It was, like, very sort of really, really silly jokes that seemed to be, like, about the characters and the way that, like, you know, the way you would see on another show, that, like, you sat with these people for a while and you, like, get a sense of their, sort of, sense of humor. Um, you mentioned that, oh, a new pickle. First of all, that whole moment, he's walking into the, I don't know what you call it, pickleball ball pavilion, what do you call, like, a, we call it a collection of pickleball courts.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Courts? I don't know.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Courts?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  A barrel?

• 12:19Speaker 03

  A jar, a jar, a jar of pickleballs.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  A pack of pickleballs, of course. Um, and you, like, when you, when he makes that joke about a new pickle, as he's walking through this, that little tunnel, the sound of the pickleball is getting struck, gets louder and louder. It sounds like, like, very ominous, but it's such a silly sound.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Boink, boink, boink.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  The stakes are very low.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  I don't think it's, like, spoiling anything, like, where, really, like, Andy Roddick recognizes the stakes are not low, even though he's, like, the, sort of, the giant antagonist. He's like, this, this does not matter.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. He doesn't feel threatened by it at all. He's like, it's not tennis.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Exactly. And, and I would give a shout to, to, to Cleo King and Lynn Marie Stewart, who play the two other older women that Candace plays with. Uh, Lynn Marie Stewart passed away, has passed away since they made this movie, but I find myself, as I get older, so conscious of how they present women who are over about 40 in movies, and these women are considerably older than that. And I think they manage to show them in a way where they are older women, they have slowed down in some ways, and that's part of their pickleball experience, but they're also funny, smart, competitive.

• 13:31Speaker 08

  You didn't think you'd be playing with a bunch of old ladies, so you're trying to bail. But we don't have numbers without you. And I came to get a swag, bitch. So I play with Judy, you play with Candace. Let's go.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  They sort of see this guy coming and they have this attitude of, like, why are you acting like this? And I think when you talk about Dusty being a man-child but not stupid, part of what that comes from is that once somebody, sort of, talks to him in a way that's, like, they're not mad at him, they're just, like, why are you acting like this? He kind of has this moment of being, like, why am I acting like this? It would be more fun to not act like this, you know?

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I also, there, I, I have to shout out, once again, Fortune Feimster, who was also in The Hawk, uh, TV show. Yeah, she, so she played in that show, she played, um, uh, Will Ferrell's new caddy in that show. But here she shows up for a smaller part, but her, her bit with another actor is very funny, just like, again, getting into the nitty gritty of, like, pickleball, just how silly it is, but also, like, how seriously people take it, and then, like, the little quirks that come with it.

• 14:39Speaker 09

  You two gonna hog the court, gab all night, or are you looking to run some pickle? We'll run some pickle.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Again, noises and sounds in this movie are very key to so much of the, the humor. I liked Aaron Chen, who plays PJ, sort of, uh, Dusty's yes man, who just, he, he just has this very, kind of, dry delivery. He's, he's worships Dusty, basically.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  All these, like, just funny asides between the two of them, between Dusty and PJ, where it's like, he's like, where, where Dusty's just like, that's not the point of the story. I'm just about, just, just.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, when they start talking about the specifics, yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Cause he's so godless, right? He's like, Andy Roddick was playing chess, and I was playing checkers, and he's like...

• 15:27Speaker 10

  Okay, I see the pattern of lying, cause you said chess.

• 15:30Speaker 11

  No, it was a storytelling device. I said, I was playing checkers and he was playing chess, meaning he was way better than me. Got it?

• 15:40Speaker 10

  Where's the device?

• 15:41Speaker 11

  What?

• 15:42Speaker 10

  Where are you keeping the, the storytelling device? Is it, like, Kindle?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Just, just, so many stupid jokes. I appreciate stupid jokes, and I mean that in a loving way.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Very, very silly.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  It has a, it has a warmth to it, that I think movies like this do not always have. It has a, rather than a, sort of, a sharp shugreeness to it, it, where, like, you're always gonna get the satisfying moment at the end of a sports movie, generally speaking, and it's gonna be figured out what that should look like, you know, what's gonna be satisfying. But there's, throughout, there's a warmth to it that I think comes through in, in the Jake Johnson performance, partly because of just who he is as a, as an actor, who Mary Steenburgen is, who some of the supporting players are. It is a warm movie as opposed to being a snarky movie, I guess I would say.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Like, it still respects tennis, but also very much respects pickleball and respects what it means to people. And I, I, I think that's a fair thing to posit and fair thing to, uh, express, is that pickleball, is it silly? Yes, but so are most sports. They all have their weird things, and it's just fun to, to see, uh, this kind of new trend, I guess, although at this point, it's not that new anymore. But this trend get its due. It's not gonna make me go out and play pickleball anytime soon, but I, I admire it.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  And I think, like, you know, we've been talking about how it, it has a little bit of fun with how seriously people take club pickleball, but I think it also has some fun with how seriously people take club tennis, right? And at some point, it kind of asks the question, like, what, what should be the point of playing sports recreationally, right? What is it supposed to be for? What, what are you supposed to be getting out of it? And at what point have you lost the plot?

• 17:36Speaker 07

  I've had people tell me that you can learn how to play pickleball in under an hour, as if that's a good thing. But that is not how you build something that lasts.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  And I think there is a little bit of a suggestion that maybe it's not the pickleball people who have lost the plot a little bit. Maybe it's the tennis people who have lost the plot, in terms of why we all should be here at a tennis club when we do not play tennis professionally and all of that stuff. Like, maybe everything should be a little bit more about community and, and being active and meeting people and having a good time. And people could stand to be a little less intense.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a real thing that, like, older millennials, like myself, like, are going through, is, like, you're trying to right-size, like, okay, the part of your life where you're gonna start PR-ing at things, right? That when you start to, like, when you're gonna have your fastest run, or, like, your best basketball-playing days, or your best soccer-playing days, those are all behind you. And so, like, now you have to, like, recalibrate yourself to, like, pick up soccer somewhere, right? And, like, you hear people all the time talking about, like, getting hurt, or, like, hey, man, I don't know if this is worth it. I don't know if, like, going out for my, my weekly Monday night basketball runs, like, if it's worth it. I have a partner and a child, like, I need to be able to walk tomorrow, like. And people having to, like, slowly come to grips with their, like, you know, diminishing capacity, that's something that so many people are going through. It's, like, why pickleball's a thing now, right?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  It's like, and so I, I think the idea, like, that pickleball is also a place where people are having that negotiation with just getting older, you know what I mean? Uh, in this movie, very much, like, he has lost this thing that gave him all this identity, uh, and now he's on the pickleball courts, maybe more than, earlier than he would have liked to have been. Uh, but pickleball's coming for us all, man. It's coming for us all.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes. So I hear.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Yep, so I hear as well. All right, well, as you can tell, we all like this one. This is a really fun movie, again, eh, you can find it on Apple TV. That brings us to the end of our show. Jean Demby, Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here. I would play pickleball with either one of you anytime, and you'd both beat me.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Oh, I, I mean, probably not, but I would, I would love to, love to play with you at some point.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Your confidence is so much placed, but I appreciate that.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Lennon Sherburne, and Mike Katz, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.

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