Jay Baruchel is persuasive when he sounds unsure of himself. His hesitant voice gives Hiccup warmth without making him conventionally heroic, and we like him most when the awkward outsider gets something to do beyond supplying jokes.
Fi1m perspective
In How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Jay Baruchel gives Hiccup a voice that sounds hesitant even as the boy starts questioning the people around him. It is a useful quality for a hero who has to reconsider the business of fighting dragons. Baruchel does not need to make him sound bold to make him worth following. We were moved by Hiccup’s growing tenderness towards the wounded Toothless, because the friendship develops slowly enough for the trust to feel earned. That slightly awkward voice is central to the film’s warmth.
That uncertainty has also been an easy thing to cast. After Almost Famous (2000) and the television lead in Undeclared (2001–02), his work included supporting parts in Judd Apatow comedies and the lead in She’s Out of My League (2010). His early films also include Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004), with Baruchel in the supporting role of Danger Barch. Repeated casting as the awkward, likeable outsider can leave an actor demonstrating the same few qualities, however well he does them.
How to Train Your Dragon shows how much depends on what the directors ask of that familiar voice. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders give Hiccup time to change his mind, so Baruchel’s hesitancy serves a developing character rather than a succession of jokes. The plot is predictable and the human supporting characters receive less care, reservations that matter in a film so concerned with understanding others. But the boy’s friendship with Toothless is persuasive enough to carry it, and Baruchel helps make its lesson about tolerance worth hearing again.
The lead as Mike Lazaridis in BlackBerry (2023) takes him into biographical drama, away from the comic version of himself he played in This Is the End (2013). It is a direction we would welcome more of, though there is no need to dismiss the work that made him familiar. For a first encounter, choose How to Train Your Dragon and listen to how little he needs to push.
Biography
Jay Baruchel is a Canadian actor and filmmaker. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, he grew up in Montreal and began acting professionally at the age of 12. He trained in theatre at the Fine Arts Core Education School.
Baruchel is known for his role as Danger Barch in Million Dollar Baby (2004). He voiced Hiccup Haddock in the How to Train Your Dragon film series (2010–2019) and appeared in Knocked Up (2007), Tropic Thunder (2008), The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010), This Is the End (2013) and RoboCop (2014). On television he has had lead roles in Undeclared (2001–2002) and Man Seeking Woman (2015–2017). He has also directed films including Goon: Last of the Enforcers (2017).
