We all know the seasons: There’s spring, summer, fall, winter and, of course, Girl Scout cookie season. When the hordes of vest-wearing youngsters fan out across America hawking boxes of Samoas and Thin Mints and Tagalongs, beware: they’re awfully hard to resist.
That is, of course, the idea, and in Alysa Nahmias’s documentary “Cookie Queens” (in theaters), four scouts spend a season figuring out how to sell cookies to everyone around them. The film is terrifically entertaining, in part because its subjects — Nikki, Ara, Olive and Shannon Elizabeth — are so fun to watch. Olive is 12 and a top seller in her council for many years running; her record is nearly 9,000 boxes. Nikki is 9 and wants to be just like her teenage sisters, who sold enough to fund their troop’s trip to Europe last year. Ara, a whip-smart 5-year-old, has set her goal at a modest 55 boxes, whereas 8-year-old Shannon Elizabeth yearns to sell enough to go to Girl Scout camp.
The subjects are from diverse backgrounds and regions of the country, but they have some things in common: gumption, determination, big dreams and very supportive families. “Cookie Queens” doesn’t trot out an expert to explain the cookie program, instead letting the details arise naturally in conversation. The Girl Scouts — or, more likely, their families — have to purchase the stock that they plan to sell. There’s a $1 profit margin on each box, and prizes and money attached to meeting sales goals. If you purchase too much stock and fail to sell it all — well, the parents are stressed about what might happen next.
Put that way, the cookie program does seem oddly similar in a few ways to multilevel marketing, especially since most of the money goes to supporting the Girl Scout organization. (Olive, in particular, seems frustrated that the girls spend so much time earning money but have limited input into programming and other decision-making.) But they’re also learning skills like math, entrepreneurship and the ability to speak with confidence, so there’s good reason for the sales to continue and for the children to get excited to join in.
But the movie isn’t out to criticize or celebrate the fund-raising approach. Instead, it’s about the girls. “Cookie Queens” follows the scouts through weeks of sales, strategy, stress and triumph. They talk about their desire to be the top seller or whether they really want to continue after this season. We get a glimpse into the pressure that cookie selling can bring, for girls and parents alike, but we also see how much fun they’re having.
There’s no thesis driving “Cookie Queens,” and it’s not an exposé — it’s a slice-of-life documentary about something so many Americans have experienced, one way or another. But its ebullient subjects make for delightful viewing, and as they learn what it means to try to make money, their experiences and the lessons they learn feel resonant far beyond cookie season.
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