Thin Mints are still at the top, but Samoas are charging, and charging hard. That’s my favorite girl scout cookie, what’s yours? Cookie Queens covers the kids at the end of that order form Susan in your office left on the table in case you want some. Reminding us all that our joy comes from these incredible kids hard, hard work.
Alysa Nahmias’s doc follows 4 kids during the girl scout cookie sales season, essentially January to March. Olive (12) from North Carolina is the top girl scout salesman in the country, selling over 8,000 boxes her best year. The other 3 girls are from the West coast, with more modest aims. Nikki (9) wants to become the highest seller in her family, beating her older sisters. Shannon Elizabeth (10) wants to sell enough to go on a camping trip, and adorable Ara (5) wants to beat her record of 5 boxes last year.
The joys of Alysa Nahmias’s Cookie Queens are the 4 queens of the film. Each one is a wholly unique, fascinating person, looking and acting completely different from the other. Olive gets the most screen time because of how important she is to the girl scouts, but also because she is more interesting than many actors in Hollywood. Unfailingly honest, she gives her inner monologue about this drive she has to be the top seller, and how that pursuit makes her feel. In this journey she comes off remarkably wise and brave, unafraid to emotionally confront her behavior and try to understand it. Nikki gets the “grow up” arc, going from the wide eyed innocent into the strange world of learning to sell, seeing her hero sisters maybe a bit differently than before the cookie season. Shannon Elizabeth is probably the most normal girl here, a daffy lover of nature who has to learn the value of hard work. And then for absolutely perfect comic relief is Ara, brazenly walking up to every person she meets with her pitch, and so convinced she’ll win everyone over with her gimmicks that, spoiler alert, more than 5 people succumb to her will in the most delightful ways possible. 90 minutes was nice, but there’s so many other girls that I would have given another 30 minutes to see another amazing saleswoman pitch a local grocery store consumer on some Thin Mints.
Which is why Alysa Nahmias limits the cookie part of the title, focusing on the queens. The bigger the movie gets the more it shows that it’s mostly girl scout propaganda. Not all of that is bad: watching one person who’s never won a trophy get one, or watching two girl scouts become best friends will bring tears to everyone in the crowd. But there’s a dark side here that hints at a deeper documentary Cookie Queens is not interested in. At one point, Shannon Elizabeth falls well behind her sales goal, and we see her not rich parents grappling with the fact they spent all this money on cookies they probably can’t sell (you guess your sales target at the beginning of the season), and poor mom barely holding it together. Nahmias could have showed how other troop members help pick up the slack for Shannon, or something like that, but instead chose the overcoming odds and happy ending, sweet, but a bit cheap. Equally interesting storylines are hinted at for the other girls too: Olive’s potentially unhealthy parenting from her mom, Nikki realizing “younger is better” for selling cookies, and Ara dealing with diabetes selling these delicious sugar explosions she can barely eat.
But I guess the Netflix True Crime doc will be the sequel that will cover those tales. Cookie Queens has 4 incredible ones to root for. Olive, Nikki, Shannon Elizabeth, and Ara: you’re amazing, and you deserve all the success you achieve in this movie. Props to the parents too, who have to be supportive and then some to help instill those hard work lessons and then some. Put me down for 2 Thin Mints, 2 Samoas, and 1 Do-si-do. Ok, I’ll add another Thin Mint to make it $30 even.