A pickleball movie where John McEnroe and Andy Roddick play themselves? Aces! Although, to be clear, there are not many aces in pickleball since you serve underhand.

At centre court of this weekend’s movie releases sits The Dink, a new sports comedy streaming on Apple TV (so you’ll have to indulge in “hot popcorn” on the couch for this one). Like Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, Ben Stiller’s Dodgeball and the little-known gem Kicking and Screaming, starring Will Ferrell, The Dink is goofy, silly, bordering on juvenile and relies heavily on the respective stars’ ability to throw cinematic temper tantrums. Here, Jake Johnson (of the millennial sitcom New Girl) gives his own take on the man-child athlete who could be great if only he could keep his cool. The obvious joke being … cool and pickleball are oxymorons. As one character puts it: “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.”

Johnson’s character, Dusty Boyd, is a failed pro tennis player who now gives lessons at his father’s club, where the pickleball contingent – despised by Dusty and his dad (Ed Harris) – are fighting for more courts, not to mention respect. Certainly, this scenario has been playing out in the hallowed halls of real-life racquet clubs as pickleball has taken the title of fastest-growing sport (with about 22 million active “picklers” worldwide). Fun fact: Despite its perceived second-class status to tennis, you can now pickle at the same venues that host the Australian, French and U.S. Open. And while the historic Wimbledon venue has yet to cave to the craze, its governing body, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, does have a community facility 20 minutes away where you can get your dink on (the uncouth name for a particular kind of winning pickleball shot).

Just like the movie’s subject, Johnson has yet to earn the respect (and box office) reserved for veterans like Sandler, Stiller (who co-stars in The Dink) and Ferrell (whose new unwatchable Netflix golf comedy series The Hawk makes The Dink look like Chariots of Fire), but he has an endearing, uncategorizable magnetism. In a single role, he can be both a sloth and a jock, moronic and intelligent, pathetic and heroic, rude and romantic. And when paired with The Dink’s secret weapon, Mary Steenburgen, he’s just as sweet and adorable as she is. 

Let’s take a quick time-out to do an In Praise Of Steenburgen, who won the best supporting actress Oscar in 1981 for Melvin and Howard and who has added gravitas and good humour to countless movies and TV shows, from films like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Parenthood to more recently playing herself on multiple episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and showing up as Ryan Reynolds’s mom in The Proposal, Will Ferrell’s stepmom in Elf and one of the gal pals in Book Club. Offscreen, she’s also a singer-songwriter who was once married to iconic British cinematic villain Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange) and has spent the last 30 years as one half of a Hollywood power couple with Ted Danson. Say no more!

Here, as Candace, a septuagenarian divorcee looking for a second act, she is both take-no-guff motherly and unapologetically girly in a tennis skirts, cute sweaters and braided pigtails. She has no problem telling Dusty, more than 25 years her junior, what music to listen to (country) and how to hit a pickleball (softly) while making a convincing case that she’s out of his league – on and off the court. “Did I picture rom-com ..?” the actress has said about being offered this love-interest role, at 73, opposite 48-year-old Johnson. “I didn’t even imagine I’d be working!”

The Dink doesn’t come close to hitting the heights of great sports comedies like Slap Shot, Caddyshack, Tin Cup or even the Canadian classic Men With Brooms. Although it does pay a brilliant homage to one of cinema’s most memorable sports scenes – the breakdown of tennis phenom Richie Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums – with The Dink’s flashback to the fateful game that ended Dusty’s pro career (against Roddick, natch). Yet, as with pickleball, if you can get past this flick’s name, it’s a satisfying low-impact humour workout – best enjoyed with a group of friends followed by tacos and beer. And thanks to McEnroe and Roddick’s participation, it all comes together with some meta masterstrokes. They are in on the joke, making fun of their own sport’s tendency to get all hot and bothered by the popularity of this black sheep of racquet games. “I get it,” says Roddick, after picking up a paddle. “It’s tennis, but easy.”