Clark Duke
Clark Duke is an actor, born 1985.
Late-2000s American comedy is where Clark Duke came up, a kid from Glenwood, Arkansas born in 1985: Lance in Sex Drive, Dale Kettlewell across Greek, Clark Green on the final season of The Office, Barry on Two and a Half Men. It is a resume built almost entirely on being somebody's friend.
He is very good at it, because his delivery is slow where everyone else is fast. Duke plays the character who has already worked out how the situation is going to go badly and has decided not to mention it. Marty in Kick-Ass and Jacob in Hot Tub Time Machine are the same instrument: the only sober person in an idiotic scenario, refusing to acknowledge that it is idiotic, which is what makes it funny. Nothing in that register requires him to raise his voice.
Voice work has given him the biggest audiences, as Thunk in the two Croods films, and the best sustained lead of his career in Inside Job, where Brett Hand is an anxious corporate people-pleaser and Duke gets to play panic instead of composure for once.
The genuine surprise is Arkansas in 2020, which he directed as well as starred in, a low-key crime picture set in the state he grew up in. It is a considerable change of key from Bad Moms and A Thousand Words, and it suggests the comedy career was always the day job.
Movies (13)
TV (8)
Where to start with Clark Duke
Hot Tub Time Machine is the best showcase for the comic persona. Jacob spends the film being the only one who understands what is happening and the only one nobody listens to, which is Duke's exact wheelhouse.
Kick-Ass is the other essential one, a smaller part in a better film, and worth it for how flatly he punctures the superhero fantasy going on beside him. For the long-form version, Inside Job is the one to actually spend time with: a lead voice role, genuinely funny writing, and more emotional range than the live-action work ever asked for. The Croods is the family option. Then watch Arkansas, which he directed, if you want to see what he does when he is not the sidekick. Sex Drive and Greek are the archaeology.