The Dink (2026)

Jack and I had a few laughs with this lightweight story of a failed tennis prodigy now country club tennis instructor who turns to pickleball after an injury. It stars Jake Johnson, Mary Steenburgen as his pickleball partner, Ed Harris as his mean dad who owns the club, Ben Stiller as a doctor, Aaron Chen as Dustin's tennis assistant, Fortune Feimster as another pickleball player, Patton Oswalt as a vocal member of the club, and former, but not failed, tennis pros Andy Roddick and John McEnroe as themselves. 

Josh Greenbaum directs from the script by Sean Clements. The original score by Dara Taylor is available online only as a two minute suite on YouTube, but you're much more likely to remember the great songs.

Dink is a kind of pickleball shot: a soft return. And Johnson and others trained so that they could actually play on screen.

Johnson was last blogged for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Steenburgen for Happiest Season, Harris for The Lost Daughter, Stiller for The Meyerowitz Stories, Feimster for Social Animals, Oswalt for I Love My Dad, Greenbaum for Will & Harper, and Taylor for Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar (which was directed by Greenbaum). I mention Chen primarily as a plug for the hilarious series Fisk, set in his native Australia, and this is Clements' feature screenwriting debut after writing for several TV series.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics, averaging 76%, are scoring higher than its audiences at 58. After seeing many ads for this movie on Apple TV, we streamed it on August 14.