It is always a challenge when I just can’t fit a good looking film festival doc into my schedule, and Cookie Queens was an audience favourite at this year’s South By Southwest Film & TV Festival and of course hit my radar AFTER the movie screened and could not watch it in Austin. Months later and many successful film stops later, the movie has finally hit theatres in a limited release. Both Paul and myself have reactions from our respective recent screenings!
About: A celebration of girlhood and the complexities that come with it, Cookie Queens is a coming-of-age story about the joys, pressures, and tensions woven into one of America’s most cherished rituals: Girl Scout Cookie season.
Jason’s Reaction: This is yet another documentary I missed at SxSW thanks to the tight scheduling and less days of the festival this year, and after it’s next stop at the Seattle International Film Festival where it had raves, I was getting more and more eager to check it out. FINALLY catching up with Cookie Queens at its limited North American release, I can now finally understand the hype and I’m happy that it’s getting out there as it’s a delightful and crowd-pleasing doc that is still far from perfect in its depiction of Girl Scout sellers, but it’s also a good movie for kids to learn early work ethic, organize and learn the real world a little bit early.
The doc focuses on four very diverse girls aged five & up to about 12, and also in different economic parts of the country. All four of the girls have their own perspective on how to sell, and I liked how the movie carefully showed their differences. I liked Olive, a very bright young girl who feels like she knows the business more than she should, and definitely knows she should be making more than the $1 profit from a $6 box. Then there’s Shannon Elizabeth, who is working the El Paso, Texas market with parents who are very financially strained. There’s a focus too on 5 year old Ara who has Type-1 Diabetes and can’t even consume much of the product she sells and is vying for a sugar-free option from the company. Rounding out the subjects is Nikki, who works with her older sisters out of Chino, California and the sequences here involving the selling of product outside of a supermarket are some of the doc’s highlights.
Cookie Queens is wise in how it shows a bunch of different girls all with their own organic sales techniques, and even at a young age we see the drive for money and to sell, and there are even some interesting takes on how the girls use either music or just hardcore “upselling” skills to just push a little bit more. Shannon Elizabeth’s story is a bit more tough as you can see her parents are struggling financially and even the movie has a few moments away from Shannon herself that are some of the best of the doc, showing a much bigger picture of some of the challenges this family can face.
Some of the kids are hamming it up for the camera and know that they are rolling, so some of their dialogue is a bit punchy and fake (there’s a dance sequence where I can tell the kids clearly know cameras are rolling and they really stage up their reactions a bit). But that’s part of the fun as filmmaker Alysa Nahmias and her team do their best to show the overall process and day-to-day operations while also hinting at the fact these kids could recoup more of the money from the sales. I did wish for a more raw reaction at times from most of the kids involved.
Growing up, my city was pretty hardcore with Girl Guides (the Canadian version) and especially their cookie runs, and it always went to a good cause here (lately I seem to see more people selling Krispy Kreme donuts than cookies in my neck of the woods). What I hope for people coming of age, and what this doc shows well, is not only to have fun with selling the product but also the learning process that comes with it and leading to better leadership skills down the road, Cookie Queens works by showing the process and in its powerful final moments also showing the personal rewards.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Paul’s Reaction: A cute, feel-good documentary that tracks four young girls as they strive to hit their sales goals during the annual six week Girl Scouts cookie drive. The film does not dig deep in questioning whether stressing out pre-adolescent girls into becoming super-sales-women is a healthy thing. Capitalism is embraced as a much desired life-goal from the get-go. In fact, the two most successful young girls are very self-aware, putting on make-up and knowing that their “cuteness” helps sell boxes of cookies at $6US a box. Olive even appears on local television and is the star performer at 8,100 boxes. The most innocent of the group is five year-old Ara, who suffers from diabetes, but goes to the gym and works out so that she will be strong enough to lug her cart around the neighbourhood hoping to sell 50 boxes. The film is executive produced by Meghan Markle and Prince Charles, and many of the scenes feel staged for the camera. The Girl Scouts could not have wished for a better promotional film.
Rating: 5 out of 10
