Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
This Friday, Netflix premieres the teen comedy Dude, a kind of Superbad for girls, about a quartet of high school girls preparing for graduation and all the terrible, terrible freedom it entails. The movie has a lot to offer, whether you’re a Lucy Hale fan from Pretty Liars, an Alexandra Shipp fan from the theatrical release Love, Simon, or an Awkwafina fan from watching the Ocean’s 8 trailer over and over and over and over again, just praying that when you wake up in the morning it will be June 8th. Or maybe you’re in it for a supporting performance by one Alex Wolff, one of the new crop of suddenly-everywhere teen boy actors (in reality, Wolff is 20, but let’s go with it).
So why are we seeing this particular young actor all over the place these days? The truth is, his moment has been happening for a while, and if you’re a Nickelodeon fan from about a decade ago, you may well have seen this coming. But can we start with the fact that Alex and his older brother Nat are both the sons of actress Polly Draper? The actress recently been in movies like Obvious Child and Side Effects, but is best known for her role on thirtysomething? Amazing. Anyway, both Alex and Nat first got famous as the stars of the Nickelodeon series (and movies) The Naked Brothers Band, a show created by their mother. You could track it down for a primer on the boys, but they were so little. It’s hard to connect those two kids to the performances they’re giving today.
If you watch the Wolff brothers today, their physical similarities are striking. They’re both tall, somewhat lanky, mop-headed boys whose offbeat qualities can either play as aloof and wise (as Nat played in The Fault in Our Stars) or awkward and nerdy (as Alex played in the recent Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle). It’s a classic teen-star formula, but the Wolff brothers in particular do well at creating characters with sensitivity, intelligence, and awareness. It’s a kind of lurking shrewdness that separates them from the more golden-boy actors like your Ansel Elgorts and Timothee Chalamets.
While Nat went off and made The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, getting a huge head start on his brother, Alex is finally making strides to catch up. His big breakthrough was in the role of terrorist Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Mark Wahlberg film Patriots Day. The next year, he took a featured indie role as the high-school pal of budding serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (played by Disney graduate Ross Lynch) in My Friend Dahmer.
And in the tradition of many a great actor, Alex doubled a nervy indie with a broadly-appealing blockbuster. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a monster commercially and a pleasant surprise qualitatively. Wolff played the unconfident teen who, in the Jumanji video game, gets The Rock as an avatar.
Things are looking up for Wolff, with the Sundance horror sensation Hereditary ahead of him this summer. Which makes Dude the perfect opportunity to jump onboard the Alex Wolff train. Particularly if you’re interested in helping younger brothers best their thus-far more successful older ones.
