You don’t have to hit hard to win pickleball — that’s the chief lesson to be taken from “The Dink,” a sports comedy titled for the dainty signature shot of the fast-growing racket sport, and it’s one that Josh Greenbaum‘s film takes to heart with its own softball comic style. Following a conceited former tennis prodigy as he’s taught a lesson in humility by a bunch of enthusiastic amateur pickleballers, this amiable-enough Apple TV original aims for the non-confrontational good vibes that most associate with the newer game, while also presenting its players as fiercer competitors than you might think.
The presence of Ben Stiller as producer (and in an oddly flat supporting role) underlines a parallel with 2004’s “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” which likewise poked gentle fun at a sport that fundamentally cannot be made to look cool on screen. But where that film was often raucously funny in its knockabout silliness, throwing out gags so fast it didn’t matter if a lot of them missed, “The Dink” has considerably less frenetic energy, or energy at all really.
More cheerfully lightweight than it is actively funny, the film is mostly content to coast on the affable hangdog charm of “New Girl” star Jake Johnson — who’s a commendably likable anchor for proceedings considering his character is, at least half the time, a blundering douchebag. He’s bolstered by a classy ensemble of supporting players who are uniformly under-challenged (save perhaps for good-sport tennis pros Andy Roddick and John McEnroe as themselves), but at least a perma-glowing Mary Steenburgen gets the most to do as his not-quite-romantic foil.
