A SLOTH STORY - Mark Reviews Movies

A Sloth Story, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 27, 2025

The members of the sloth family at the center of A Sloth Story are no stereotypical sloths. They are fast, except when it comes to cooking, and work hard, running a restaurant in an out-of-the-way locale in Australia. They're an interesting bunch, and if director Tania Vincent, Erica Harrison, and Ryan Greaves' screenplay actually focused on them instead of a generic plot, this animated movie might have been on to something.

We do get to know Laura (voice of Teo Vergara), the young daughter of the three-toed clan, and her family a bit before that plot get in motion. The characterizations are, unfortunately, about as shaky as the intentionally jittery animation, which actually gives the movie a bit of a personality—with its stop-and-go movement and punctuating motion lines. It's a shame that can't be said of the rest of the material.

After finding success in a remote location among other animals who like to take things a bit more slowly, Laura and the rest end up having to abandon their restaurant and home after a sudden, devastating destroys the structure. Father Luis (voice of Ben Gorroño) constructs a makeshift food truck from the ruins, with the big plan of driving to the city, finding a new piece of property, and running a new restaurant using all of their familiar kitchenware and appliances. Laura's mother Gabriella (voice of Olivia Vásquez) is hesitant, because she's not a fan of change and worries that the sloths aren't prepared for the fast pace of Sanctuary City.

That premise alone is somewhat promising, if only because it suggests that there could be more to these characters, who also include Laura's older brother Mani (voice of Facundo Herrera), who's not nearly as ambitious as his sister and a bit of slacker in his own right. Once they arrive in the bustling metropolis, though, the script mostly comes to a halt in letting us see these characters as they are and try to adapt to a new lifestyle.

Instead, we're introduced to a routine villain. She's a cheetah named Dotti Pace (voice of Leslie Jones), the head of a chain of fast-food restaurants in the city. That character and her enterprise offer some broad satire about the industry, from the fact that Zoom Fuel franchises only have two menu items (fired directly into the mouths of customers), to Dotti's philosophy that food doesn't need to taste good as long as it provides a boost of energy, and to, well, not much else, actually.

The plot, which has Dotti scheming to find a way to get more animals to eat her restaurants' food, has little to do with the sloths until it needs to, but since the whole narrative is building toward that, it's not as if our main characters have much time to or use in doing anything unconnected to it. Laura makes some new friends while exploring the city, discovering that she can throw a cricket ball very fast.

Meanwhile, Gabriella tries to offer the old restaurant's full menu and to cook at her usual pace. It's not until Laura suggests that the food truck should only serve one item a day that it begins to succeed, leading her to need to work with her family instead of doing what she wants with her friends.

A few of the odder details here include that Dotti's eventual plan, which sees her trying to buy or steal the sloth family's recipe book to make tastier options for the chain, doesn't really matter (Her scientists have made the food so caffeinated and addictive that it eventually turns consumers into zombies), as well as Gabriella's increasing forgetfulness. It's more than that, as it turns out, because the sloth is apparently in the early stages of dementia.

Of all the things that a formulaic and family-friendly animated movie isn't generally prepared to handle, the gradual cognitive decline of one of its main characters would certainly be high on that last. Vincent (who co-directed with Ricard Cussó), Harrison, and Greaves certainly don't break such expectations, especially since Gabriella's condition is used for early laughs, some mistakes when the family attempts to retrieve the recipe book, and a few efforts at pathos.

Those last ones really don't work. For one thing, the movie is too busy with action and comedy by then to earn them. For another, these are cutesy, cartoony sloths we're talking about, after all. That's not to say the movie's medium or style should automatically restrict what it can do with its storytelling, obviously.

It is, though, to say that, if the filmmakers wanted to tell that particular story and make it mean something, the storytelling would have to be completely different than it is here—far less concerned with its busy business and more attentive to these characters. It's neither, though, so A Sloth Story just comes across as occasionally misguided in between the far more usual hijinks and plot developments.

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