COOKIE QUEENS – Review by Loren King
This charming film has surprising texture and grit. It’s anchored by four young Girl Scouts, ranging in age from 5 to 12, each with her own delightful personality. Director Alysa Nahmias’s film is strictly observational, yet what emerges is a nuanced look at the longstanding fundraising tradition of selling girl scout cookies through these four well-chosen subjects and their families.
The four scouts — Nikki, age 9; Ara, just 5; Olive, 12, and Shannon Elizabeth, 8 — hail from various parts of the country. As each pursues the hard-selling of cookies over the six-week timeframe to win prizes and gain personal satisfaction, Cookie Queens subtly presents an inherent contradiction. On the one hand, the girls’ excitement, drive and ambition is genuine and admirable; one the other, the pressure to sell, and the need for family to pitch in even if they don’t have the time or the means, is problematic.
Leave it to assertive and whip-smart Olive, a champion seller from Charlotte, NC, to catch onto this and take action. Olive and her best friend calculate the lopsidedness of a business model where the girls earn one dollar for each six-dollar box of cookies sold while the organization takes the rest. “We do all the work,” notes Olive. She puts her money where her mouth is and writes a tactful but pointed letter to the organization which results in Olive being named a non-voting member of the advisory board. Meanwhile, little Ara, a diabetic, is equally inspiring as she learns her own lesson in entrepreneurship and creates, with the help of her supportive mother, a sugar-free cookie, identifying an untapped market.
Cookie Queens is rich with revelatory and engaging scenes like this; it’s a sweet, family-friendly film with substance.
