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Gene Demby
a collection of pickleball courts?
Layla Faldel
I don't know.
Aisha Harris
Courts? I don't know. A barrel, A barrel, a jar, jar of pickleballs.
Linda Holmes
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, Aisha.
Aisha Harris
Hello, Linda.
Linda Holmes
And also with us is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Gene Demby. Hello, Gene.
Gene Demby
What's good, y'?
Aisha Harris
All?
Gene Demby
So glad to be here.
Linda Holmes
I love to have you here to talk about other things, but especially sports.
Gene Demby
Yes.
Linda Holmes
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 embroile 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. Hey, you should play again. You could be a great pickleballer.
Aisha Harris
A great pickleballer.
Announcer
I pass.
Layla Faldel
Why?
Linda Holmes
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.
Aisha Harris
Yes, those are the exact reasons.
Linda Holmes
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. Aisha, I'm going to start with you. How did you like the Dink?
Aisha Harris
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 when I was in.
Gene Demby
Oh, wow. Are you serious?
Aisha Harris
Yes. We did have to play it in gyms, so. And I 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. 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 will describe for this movie for me.
Linda Holmes
Yeah. How about Eugene? What do you think?
Gene Demby
So now I'm like, wait, why is it called pickleball?
Aisha Harris
I don't know.
Gene Demby
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 just alluded to this. All these, like, silly asides that don't have anything to do with anything. They're just sort of like these weird digressions, like people go on. I have a lot of time for Jake Johnson. I have a lot of time for Mary Steenbergen. They have really great chemistry, I guess, which is not surprising because I think Mary Steenbergen probably has good chemistry for everybody.
Linda Holmes
Yeah, agreed.
Gene Demby
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. This felt like a really nice sitcom stretched out to 90 minutes, but didn't feel stretched out. 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.
Aisha Harris
Right.
Gene Demby
It felt like a really silly TV series about a tennis club. You know what I mean? And again, that's not a complaint. Like, it was so Much fun to watch this during a big sports moment where 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. Sound is so dumb. It's like.
Aisha Harris
It's like asmr.
Gene Demby
Absolutely. There's just all these like, little moments in the movie that I just genuinely chuckle worthy. I enjoyed this a lot.
Linda Holmes
Yeah, I enjoyed this a lot too. I was a little caught off guard. Cause 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. 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 are you doing with your lousy attitude and your everything like that. And I think it changes the chemistry of the movie so much to have him pretty quickly from his sort of sour mood toward everything.
Aisha Harris
Calm down, you're being a sore loser. You're being a sore loser, everybody.
Gene Demby
I hate this stupid game.
Linda Holmes
I'm leaving.
Aisha Harris
Hey, kid.
Linda Holmes
What?
Aisha Harris
You want a rematch? Yes, I'd like that opportunity.
Linda Holmes
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 a bunch of really fun people in the supporting cast. 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.
Gene Demby
He's getting progressively larger. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Linda Holmes
Are you reading off of something?
Ad Actor
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.
Linda Holmes
Patton Oswalt is in it and I think is very funny. Ed Harris is really Ed Harris ing it up for you.
Gene Demby
Pickleball, the novel Coronavirus of Sports.
Linda Holmes
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.
Aisha Harris
Definitely.
Gene Demby
Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree.
Linda Holmes
Yeah. We've got a lot more to talk about. We'll be right back after this break.
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Aisha Harris
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 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 have like an under two hour movie, you get all those jokes in. 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 hear someone just readily say, like, hey, ho, ho, new guy, fresh pickle. And it's just like. 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. And 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 a affable character. And he's not. He's playing a man child, but he's also like, not dumb. He has his hangups and he has his very insecure and he's got daddy issues. But he's not stupid. Right. He has like a emotional intelligence to him that needs to be tapped into. And he finds that through the Kansas character and through these older women who 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.
Gene Demby
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 kinds of jokes they were making. Right. It was like very sort of really, really silly jokes that seem 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 get a sense of their sort of senses of humor you mentioned. Oh, a new pickle. First of all, that whole moment he's walking into the. I don't know what you call it. Pickleball pavilion. What do you call, like a. You call a collection of pickleball courts?
Linda Holmes
I don't know courts.
Aisha Harris
I don't know. A barrel.
Gene Demby
A barrel.
Aisha Harris
A jar. A jar. A jar of pickleballs.
Gene Demby
A peck of pickleballs. Of course. 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 pickleballs getting struck gets louder and louder. It sounds like very ominous, but it's such a silly sound. The stakes are very low.
Aisha Harris
Yeah.
Gene Demby
I don't think it's like spoiling anything to reveal that. Andy Roddick recognizes that the stakes are not low. Even though he's the sort of the giant antagonist, he's like, this does not matter.
Linda Holmes
Yes, exactly.
Aisha Harris
He doesn't feel threatened by it at all. He's like, it's not Texas.
Linda Holmes
Exactly. And I would give a shout to Cleo King and Lynne Marie Stewart, who play the two other older women that Candace plays with. Lynne 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 managed 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.
Aisha Harris
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 sweat bitch. So I play with Judy, you play with Candace. Let's go.
Linda Holmes
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?
Aisha Harris
Yeah, yeah. I also. There I have to shout out once again, Fortune Feemster, who was also in the Hawk TV show. Yeah. So she played in that show. She played 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.
Linda Holmes
You two gonna hog the court, gab all night, or are you looking to run some pickle? We'll run some pickle again.
Aisha Harris
Noises and sounds in this movie are very key to so much of the humor. I liked Aaron Chen, who plays pj. He's sort of Dusty's yes man, who just. He just has this very kind of dry delivery. He worships Dusty, basically.
Gene Demby
All these just funny assads between the two of them, between Dusty and pj, where it's like he's like. Where Dusty's just like. That's not the point of the story. I need you to just follow just.
Linda Holmes
Oh, yeah, yeah. When they start talking about the specifics. Yeah.
Gene Demby
Cause he's so guileless, Right. He's like, Andy Roddick was playing chess and I was playing checkers. And he was like, okay, I see
Aisha Harris
the pattern of lying. Cause you said chess. No, it was a story storytelling device. I said I was playing checkers and he was playing chess.
Gene Demby
Meaning he was way better than me.
Layla Faldel
Got it.
Aisha Harris
Where's the device?
Gene Demby
What.
Aisha Harris
Where are you keeping the storytelling device? Is it like Kindle?
Gene Demby
Just a way to tell so many stupid jokes. I appreciate stupid jokes, and I mean that in a loving way. Very, very simple.
Linda Holmes
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 sugariness to it where, like, you're always going to get the satisfying moment at the end of a sports movie, generally speaking, and it's going to be figured out what that should look like. You know, what's going to be satisfying. But there's. Throughout, there's a warmth to it that I think comes through in the Jake Johnson performance, partly because of just who he is 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.
Aisha Harris
Yes, yes. Like, it still respects tennis, but also very much respects pickleball and respects what it means to people. And I think that's a fair thing to posit and fair thing to 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 get to see 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 going to make me go out and play pickleball anytime soon. But I admire it.
Linda Holmes
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 kind of asks the question, like, what. What should be the point, right, of playing sports recreationally?
Ad Actor
Right.
Linda Holmes
What is it supposed to be for? What are you supposed to be getting out of it? And at what point have you lost the plot?
Gene Demby
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.
Linda Holmes
And I think there is a little bit of a suggestion that maybe it's like the pickleball people who've 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 being active and meeting people and having a good time, and people could stand to be a little less intense.
Gene Demby
I mean, this is a real thing that older millennials like myself are going through is like, you trying to right size. Like, okay, the part of your life where you gonna start pring at things, right? When you start to. When you're gonna have your fastest runs 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 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 is a thing now, right? It's like, right? And so 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? In this movie, very much like he has lost this thing that gave him all this identity and now he's on the pickleball courts maybe more than earlier than he would have liked to have been. But pickleball is coming for us all, man. It's coming for us all.
Linda Holmes
That's true.
Aisha Harris
Yeah. Yes. So I hear. Yep.
Linda Holmes
So I hear as well.
Aisha Harris
All right.
Linda Holmes
Well, as you can tell, we all like this one. This is a really fun movie. Again, a you can find it on Apple tv. That brings us to the end of our show. Gene 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.
Aisha Harris
I mean, probably not, but I would love to, love to play with you at some point.
Gene Demby
Your confidence is so misplaced, but I appreciate that.
Linda Holmes
This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Lennon Sherburne, and Mike Katsif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica. 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.
Gene Demby
This season on Planet Money Summer School, we go to China, one of the world's biggest economies. And what we learned is Americans are crazy.
Aisha Harris
Chinese are crazy.
Gene Demby
These are two countries full of these crazy hustlers. The US And China are more alike than you might think. On Planet Money Summer School, a strange lesson about success, how to handle the downsides of progress. Listen on the NPR app or wherever
Aisha Harris
you get your podcasts.
Layla Faldel
The midterms are coming, and that means the news cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall. So this summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I'm Layla Faldel on up first, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to Upverse today wherever
Linda Holmes
you get your podcasts. The NPR app cuts through the noise, bringing you local, national and global coverage. No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense. Download it in your app store today.
Episode Date: July 29, 2026
Hosts: Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, with guest Gene Demby
Episode Theme: Review and discussion of the sports comedy film The Dink, which centers on pickleball—a sport that has recently exploded in popularity.
This episode is dedicated to The Dink, a new sports comedy that brings the classic "silly sports movie" formula to the uniquely modern world of pickleball. Hosted by Linda Holmes and Aisha Harris, joined by NPR's Code Switch host Gene Demby, the discussion explores the film's lighthearted humor, surprising warmth, depiction of intergenerational friendships, and its playful jabs at the sometimes-absurd seriousness with which both tennis and pickleball are taken. The conversation also touches on societal shifts that make pickleball more culturally relevant—especially to aging millennials.
| Time | Speaker | Quote | |-------|--------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:47 | Linda Holmes | “He was once a promising young tennis player… Now he kicks around the tennis club… hating his life.” | | 02:16 | Aisha Harris | “I found it utterly delightful… lots of funny little moments and asides that kept this movie [going].”| | 03:46 | Gene Demby | “I thought this was an incredibly dumb movie. And I mean that in the most affectionate way possible.” | | 05:04 | Linda Holmes | “She just treats it like it’s funny that he’s being so ridiculous about it... they’re making each other laugh.” | | 07:51 | Gene Demby | “Pickleball, the novel Coronavirus of Sports.” (citing a movie line) | | 10:52 | Aisha Harris | “I love movies…where you see genuine friendships between like a generational divide…” | | 18:28 | Gene Demby | “Pickleball is coming for us all, man.” |
Pop Culture Happy Hour’s review of The Dink is warm, enthusiastic, and lively—mirroring the film itself. The hosts praise the movie’s breezy pace, vibrant characters, and ability to find humor and heart in what could be a throwaway concept. They admire its relatable depiction of aging, social connection, and the sometimes silly seriousness with which we take our leisure. Overall, The Dink is heartily recommended as a gentle, funny, and timely sports comedy.
Available to stream on Apple TV.