Story
Laura Flores (voice of Teo Vergara) is a young sloth who is impatient with her family’s slow speed. Her mum Gabriella (Olivia Vasquez) cooks the food for their family restaurant, preparing each recipe slowly and carefully from her much-treasured family recipe book. When their home is destroyed by a very bad storm, the Flores family travel to Sanctuary City in their mobile café, taking the salvaged recipe book with them.
They discover that they are in competition with a fast-food outlet called ‘Food is Fuel’, which is run by an enterprising leopard named Dotti (Leslie Jones). Laura manages to convince her family that they need to change their business model if they are to compete. Laura researches the Food is Fuel outlet and discovers some disturbing facts.
When Dotti starts losing business to the more wholesome food, she is intent on getting her hands on Gabriella’s recipe book, and she is also prepared to go to extreme lengths to save her business.
Themes
Family traditions; culture; business ethics; unethical scientific research; zombies
Violence
The Sloth Lane has some violence. For example:
- Dotti is prone to fits of rage and throws objects at her staff and shouts at them.
- Laura is restrained by a giant burger while Dotti steals the recipe book from her. Laura is then thrown out onto the street.
- A toad throws an object onto a darkened window, cracking the glass.
- Laura and Gabriella fight verbally.
- Laura and her friends fire guacamole at the zombies.
Sexual references
The Sloth Lane has some sexual references – for example, Gabriella and her husband Luis often hug and kiss each other.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
There’s no substance use in The Sloth Lane.
Nudity and sexual activity
There’s no nudity and sexual activity in The Sloth Lane.
Product placement
There’s no product placement in The Sloth Lane.
Coarse language
The Sloth Lane has some coarse language – for example, ‘hell no’ and ‘it sucks’.
Ideas to discuss with your children
The Sloth Lane is an Australian, animated adventure drama about the importance of family, culture and traditions. However, it’s quite scary in places and is therefore not suitable for children under 7 years, and parental guidance is recommended for children aged 7-8 years.
The main messages from The Sloth Lane are the importance of family and the value of keeping family traditions alive.
Values in The Sloth Lane that you could reinforce with your children are loyalty, friendship, courage, kindness, and openness to change and taking risks.
The Sloth Lane could give you the chance to talk with your children about respectful ways to treat employees and what it means to run an ethical business. You could also talk about trying to live in the fast lane verses embracing the slow, tried-and-true ways of doing things.