Just where does this thing take place, anyway? (Geez, and I thought Flow had confusing geography) Sloths are found in Central and South America. So it makes sense that the sloth family in question speaks Latinx-accented English and cooks traditional Hispanic dishes. And then the move 900k -by VAN- to “Sanctuary City,” where the creatures have Australian accents and play cricket.
Whaaaaa?
I looked it up; there’s only one country in the Western Hemisphere that is a member of the International Cricket Council … it’s the West Indies. Pretty sure the people of the West Indies don’t speak with Australian accents.
This is, indeed, more confusing than Flow.
Never mind. Let’s talk about these sloths. First of all, they’re darn active for, you know, sloths. This quartet run a family restaurant. The joke here is that it takes mom two hours to prepare a dish … but that still seems pretty active. The parents are introduced as fantasy heroes in a Raiders of the Lost Ark forbidden cave opening, in which slow creatures die. I’m sorry, why did you rip off Raiders just now? What was the point of that?
Youngest sib Laura (voice of Teo Vergara) is quite the go-getter. She’s a waitress, but has ambition and a desire to move upwards and outwards. That also seems very un-sloth-like. Doesn’t really matter when a hurricane destroys the sloth family restaurant, forcing them to move to the big city and operate a food truck. Here, two weird things happen: 1) Laura is introduced to cricket. Even as a sloth, she’s a tremendous team upgrade over a cooler with a face painted on it. 2) We are introduced to Zoom Fuel, a rival food chain operated by a jungle cat named Dotti Pace (Leslie Jones). Zoom Fuel only has
two things on the menu – a burger and a drink. It seems Sanctuary City might be starved for variety.
Aside from the two sight gags I mentioned above, nothing else in this film made me smile. I can see how A Sloth Story (nee: “The Sloth Lane” WTF?!) is a family tale about recipes and tradition handed from generation to generation. There is value in such. OTOH, neither A Sloth Story nor any of its characters are terribly compelling. On top of that, I feel like you’re deliberately missing the defining characteristic of sloths.
They’re slow. That’s the poin. It’s not like we don’t know what sloths are about; there’s literally a deadly sin entitled “sloth.” It has nothing to do with ambition or go-getting. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Want to see “sloth” done well? Try Zootopia. So I dunno what these sloth-lookin’ creatures are, but they aren’t sloths. Perhaps “An Ocelot Story” doesn’t roll off the tongue as well. Would the film have been better with ocelots instead of sloths? No. This was a dog no matter what you do.
There once was a sloth called Laura
Who was wanting from life a bit more-a
But rejecting her kin
Proved a mortal sin
And the story was still a big snore-a
Rated PG, 90 Minutes
Director: Tania Vincent, Ricard Cussó
Writer: Ryan Greaves, Erica Harrison, Tania Vincent
Genre: Confusing geography
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: How into cartoons are you?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who fear the sloth revolution!
