These are bleak days for film and TV comedy.
There’s no shortage of it, of course. What is in short supply is laughs.
There’s a reason why comedies are on streaming services; nobody in their right mind would pay to see them. Balls Up, Ladies First, 72 Hours, Little Brother all have, at best, a couple of amusing moments. At worst, they are unwatchable. (72 Hours, a Kevin Hart ‘comedy’ is at 17% on Rotten Tomatoes; Ladies First, starring Sasha Baron Cohen, is depressingly bad).
But while Netflix goes for quantity, Apple goes for quality, and it pays off with the first decent streaming comedy in a long time.
The Dink sounds like the title of a juvenile frat boys comedy, but it’s not. I’m not going to say that it’s sophisticated (the title gives it away), but it’s pretty smart, well-acted and on one occasion actually surprising.
The story: Dusty ‘The Hammer’ Boyd (Jake Johnson, former star of New Girl) is a washed-up, would-be tennis star. His father (a very nasty Ed Harris) rode his son mercilessly to become a professional, until he crashed and burned in his first match against real-life pro Andy Roddick. An injury suffered in the match ended his career before it really began.
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Now embittered and friendless, save for one sycophantic friend (Aaron Chen, from the delightful Aussie TV comedy Fisk), Dusty is reduced to being an instructor at his father’s hoity-toity tennis club, which is fighting against the “epidemic” of pickleball, kind of a variation of tennis for people who can’t play tennis. Dusty’s dad despises pickleball, and comes up with a tournament idea designed to force pickleball out of the club.
Meanwhile, Dusty reaggravates an old injury, and his doctor (Ben Stiller) tells him to play pickleball to speed his recovery. Reluctantly, he goes to a pickleball court, where he meets a tennis club member he banished (Mary Steenburgen).
The pickleball vs. tennis story plays out just as expected, of course. But there is one plot point, the relationship between Johnson and Steenburgen, that takes an unexpected turn that elevates The Dink well above other streaming comedies.
The Dink isn’t uproariously funny, but it is clever and entertaining despite the predictability of the father vs. son plot, with lots of solid laughs (John McEnroe in particular makes a very funny cameo). The dialogue is sharp (almost obscenity-free!), and the characters are believable.
It’s fun, kind of like pickleball.
