Roadside Attractions

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. 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.

Audiences follow four girls and their extremely different cookie goals over the six-week selling window. At one end of the spectrum is twelve-year-old former record holder Olive’s initial 4000-box goal (spoiler alert: she obliterates that number). On the other end of the spectrum is five-year-old Ara with 55. Shannon Elizabeth’s spirit keeps her nervous parents on track, while Nikki longs to step out of the shadow of her top-selling older sisters’ legacy. Each girl has a vibrant personality. Audiences will fall in love with them.

Cookie Queens is charming, even inspiring, but focuses strongly on the girls’ cookie selling. At times, the experienced parents’ own ambitions seem to come forward, even causing one girl to remark on it. It is all very entrepreneurial but sometimes the reason for the cookies gets a bit lost. While it does give us a nice glimpse of each girl’s selling style and their personalities and goals, the documentary falls a bit short on showing us why the girls love Scouting and what they get out of it, such as the sense of self-reliance and team work in the outdoors, although they do talk a little about the friendships that they have formed and there are a few campfire shots. Still, Cookie Queens is a warm, uplifting peek at some hard-working, imaginative – and winning (in both senses) – girls who charm us as they tempt us with those delicious cookies.

Cookie Queens is fun, but it also subtly challenges viewers to think more critically about the Girl Scout Cookie selling season. The girls in this documentary seem to learn quite a bit about personal responsibility in business. But does selling cookies for the whole summer rob children of their time to be a kid? Do the Boy Scouts do any of this? Why are girls relegated to “selling,” i.e. people pleasing and relying on looks (in this case, cuteness) to make a profit? Is this cookie-selling industry really about teaching girls about business? Or is there an element of exploitation involved?