In Review: 'The Dink,' 'Her Private Hell'

The Dink
Dir. Josh Greenbaum
102 min.

Is it really possible that Jake Johnson hasn’t starred in an underdog sports comedy until now? The subgenre seems practically tailored to his rumpled comic strengths, from his default hangdog demeanor to his characters’ tendency to become outrageously frustrated at the smallest perceived slight to his ability to remain likable no matter how big of a loser he’s playing. And in The Dink, he plays a character who’s pretty much come to be defined by losing. Once a promising young tennis pro nicknamed “The Hammer,” Dusty (Johnson) has never recovered from a decades-old loss due to, as he tells it, an accident caused by an Andy Roddick mindgame.

Now in his mid-’40s, Dusty has been reduced to giving lessons to children at a country club owned by his father Chuck (Ed Harris), who’s neither forgiven nor forgotten his son’s failureto become a star. Chuck has other worries, too, namely the spread of pickleball, which he describes as “the novel coronavirus of sports” that he has, until now, relegated to a single, dilapidated court. And, if Chuck has his way, it will lose even that foothold thanks to a club bylaw that allows for a conflict to be settled by a duel, which he plans to interpret as a showdown between the pickleball enthusiasts (a faction led by Patton Oswalt’s Skip) and his club’s best tennis player—a role Dusty wrongfully assumes will be his.

It’s not, and when Dusty aggravates an old injury his doctor (Ben Stiller) hands him an unusual prescription: pickleball. After reluctantly following his advice, Dusty finds himself playing alongside a group of septuagenarian pickleball enthusiasts, including the spirited but vulnerable Candace (Mary Steenburgen), who’s thrown herself into the sport to dull the pain of a recent divorce. Despite his deeply ingrained anti-pickleball prejudice, Dusty finds himself taken with the sport and, before long, with Candace.

Directed by Josh Greenbaum (Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar) and written by Sean Clements (Workaholics), The Dink doesn’t always balance an instinct to push its comedy into the realm of absurdity with a desire to stay grounded in Dusty and Candace’s unlikely friendship. Fortunately, it remains entertaining no matter which direction the pendulum swings. Johnson is, as usual, a charming presence, one able to keep it unclear whether Dusty is being ironic or trying to hold onto as much dignity as possible in his diminished circumstances when he brags about owning a 1999 Buick LeSabre with less than 200,000 miles on the odometer. 

Johnson also has a nice comedic chemistry with Steenburgen, particularly once Dusty’s desire to make Candace happy, and confusion about what he’s feeling, pushes him out of his comfort zone (even awakening an appreciation for heartstring-tugging country music). The film surrounds him with comedic ringers (in addition to Oswalt and Stiller, Chloe Feinman and Chris Parnell show up briefly and Australian comic Aaron Chen plays Dusty’s worshipful sidekick) and has an agreeable pleasantness even in stretches where the jokes don’t quite land. The title comes from a pickleball term for the soft, close shots that set it apart from the more hard-charging sport of tennis. It’s an apt one for a film that succeeds by piling one little laugh and sweet moment on top of another. —Keith Phipps

The Dink begins streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday, July 24th.

Her Private Hell
Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
109 min.

The arc of Nicolas Winding Refn’s career has so uncannily mirrored that of Valhalla Rising, his 2009 adventure about a one-eyed Norseman’s wayward quest for revenge, that it seems quite possible that he storyboarded the whole thing out, given the control he exerts over his films. Just as his hero’s journey begins with a pulpy, gruesome fight against his 12th century oppressors, the early part of Refn’s filmography starts with highlights like the Pusher crime trilogy and Bronson, his nasty, Clockwork Orange-inspired biopic about a notorious British inmate. But once it reaches roughly the halfway mark, Valhalla Rising turns more and more abstract, turning into a beautiful yet fussily stylized vision of hell that seeks to get some distance from its genre roots. And that section seems to presage Refn’s more recent work like Only God Forgives, The Neon Demon, and a pair of streaming series, Too Old to Die Young and Copenhagen Cowboy, that are hermetic in the extreme. His work now carries a “byNWR” production label, and he now seems fully lost to his own branding. 

The surprise pivot point for Refn was his 2011 sensation Drive, which now looks like the ideal marriage of genre force and dreamy ambience, but he’s been drifting irretrievably toward the latter with each new project. Any hope that his first feature in 10 years—a period disrupted by the two series and a near-death experience in 2023—might set him on a different course are dashed immediately and repeatedly by Her Private Hell, a turgid and vapid art object that takes all the motion out of “motion picture.” It’s the cruelest kind of genre deconstruction in that Refn’s dreamlike story of desire, grief, and serial murder evokes filmmakers like Dario Argento, David Lynch, and Brian De Palma while removing all of the elements that make their movies exciting. Poor Pino Donaggio, the legendary Italian composer of Don’t Look Now and several of De Palma’s best works, provides an original score in search of some action. 

Opening in an unnamed urban netherworld that billows with great plumbs of pastel blue and hot pink mist, Her Private Hell takes place primarily in a luxury hotel suite where Elle (Sophie Thatcher), a popular actress, rides out delays in the shooting of a new movie called Candy Floss. (The look of Candy Floss, a sci-fi movie, is not that dissimilar from Elle’s environs off set, a continuity that’s surely deliberate but adds to the tonal grind.) There’s some conflict between Elle and her like-aged stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), whose marriage to Elle’s father, Johnny Thunders (sigh, yes, that’s his name), has never met with her approval. Meanwhile, a monster dubbed “The Leather Man” lurks in the mist, preying on young women that he rips apart and discards in black gloves covered in rhinestones. The Leather Man is also a force in Tokyo, where an American GI named K (Charlie Melton) actively seeks him out in the hope that killing him will liberate K’s abducted daughter. 

The Elle and K storylines inevitably converge, but Refn doesn’t clarify the geography or the temporal alignment that makes it possible, because Elle’s locale is unidentified and futuristic while K wanders what appears to be post-war Japan. These disparities aren’t that important to Refn, because Her Private Hell has the unified appearance of Refnsville, where atmosphere is paramount and, per the title, seems to reflect the primal terrors of womanhood. Refn still has an unmistakable visual style, with impeccable colors and compositions that seem to whiff of perfume, and a dry sense of humor emerges here and there, like when Elle makes a reference to Hans Christian Andersen and a young actress says she “doesn’t really listen to European music.” But more often, the dialogue is arch and stilted (lines like “This movie’s gonna be hell” are an aural “Kick Me” sign), and his investment in his characters’ interior lives is purely theoretical. There’s little here to feel but boredom. — Scott Tobias

Her Private Hell opens in select theaters this weekend.