Given that it’s become one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, it was only inevitable for pickleball to be the subject of a sports comedy. Enter The Dink, a film which has quite a few funny ideas at play, but manages to run most of them into the ground until they barely make it across the finish line. Thankfully it’s a film that’s populated by hilarious personalities, utilizing their greatest strengths.

Director Josh Greenbaum has made a number of funny films, including Barb and Star go to Vista del Mar and Strays. Screenwriter Sean Clements is a very funny comedian and podcaster. Jake Johnson, Mary Steenburgen, Ben Stiller, Patton Oswalt, and Chloe Fineman are all naturally funny people, and Ed Harris subverts his finely-tuned screen persona to great comedic effect. So what is it that’s missing from The Dink? It could be its formulaic story of Dusty “The Hammer” Boyd (Johnson), a washed-up former tennis prodigy who now spends his days as the tennis instructor at his father Chuck’s (Harris) country club.

Dusty was once a promising young star in the amateur tennis circuit, under the Richard Williams-esque thumb of his father/coach, until a fateful match against Andy Roddick which derailed his dreams and career. Of course, this doesn’t derail his braggadocios attitude, or stop him from betting his 1999 Buick LeSabre – with less than 200,000 miles on it! – once Candace (Steenburgen) and her pickleball friends intrude on his territory. His ego isn’t helped by his loyal sidekick/hype man PJ (Aaron Chen), who mostly exists as a sounding board for Dusty’s lore.

The plot of The Dink kicks in once Chuck learns that the pickleball faction of the country club plans to expand their reach, which he takes as an afront to the sacred sport of tennis. Because this is a movie, Chuck finds an obscure loophole in the club’s charter wherein the two sides must choose a champion to compete for supremacy. And because this is a movie, Dusty learns that, after a wrist injury, pickleball is a great source of rehabilitation. This throws Dusty and Candace into a reluctant partnership, where they learn and help each other on and off the pickleball courts.

Candace is still reeling from her recent divorce, and Dusty naturally senses a romantic connection between them. Thankfully The Dink subverts the cliché in this regard, instead becoming a sort of film about the beauty of independence. Dusty’s main reason for competing in the tournament comes from his incessant need to please his impossible-to-please dad, who still laments his free ride over Dusty’s failed career. Greenbaum is helped by Johnson and Steenburgen’s natural chemistry; he’s cocky but naive, and she can be sweet with a prickly side. Ben Stiller, in a rare but welcome role in front of the camera, makes an impression as Dusty’s weirdly invasive doctor, even if his one joke is repeated until it’s almost not funny anymore whenever he reappears. Andy Roddick and John McEnroe appear as thelmselves, and perhaps I’m still haunted by the lackluster cameos in Happy Gilmore 2, but they brighten up the obligatory championship match.

The Dink likely won’t stand the test of time in the same ways that Happy Gilmore, Talladega Nights, or Major League have. It’s a much less silly film than those, and it never lets its stars as loose as those films did. Sorry, Dusty “The Hammer” Boyd, but you’re no Happy Gilmore or Rick Vaughn. It’s true that Johnson and Steenburgen deserve to anchor comedies worthy of their talents, but they need a script that doesn’t leave them trapped in genre conventions. Maybe one day soon a great sports comedy about pickleball will come along, but The Dink isn’t it.

The Dink will be available to stream on AppleTV on July 24.

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