I’d be hesitant to trust anyone who doesn’t like Girl Scout Cookies, so I understand its mass appeal as a documentary subject; my expectations, however, were moderate at best. Would there be enough story and dramatic weight to sustain an entire feature about four girls from different backgrounds selling Thin Mints, Trefoils and Peanut Butter Patties over one season?
Happily, Cookie Queens is as charming as one could hope and far deeper than one might expect. Director Alysa Nahmias deploys the tried-and-true formula pioneered by spelling bee documentary Spellbound over twenty years ago, cutting back and forth between a few primary subjects all working on a common task. Where this film varies is that they’re not necessarily competing against each other; instead, each subject has a personal goal in terms of how much they will sell. For precocious overachiever Olive (age 12), it’s 5,000 boxes (which she continues to increase as she sells that amount and more.) Little Ara (age 5), on the other hand, sets a more realistic goal (for her) of 45 boxes. Nikki (age 9) and her much older sisters all want to sell enough to earn money for the three of them to travel to Europe. Meanwhile, Shannon Elizabeth (age 8) just wants to sell enough to attend summer camp but has limited resources to do so compared to some of the other girls.
As these four narratives develop, they touch upon themes of sisterhood (Nikki), societal (and self) pressure (Olive), economic hardship (Shannon Elizabeth) and health-related issues (Ara). With each subject, Nahmias also focuses on both the various day-to-day struggles and often transformative wonder of simply being a kid. One roots for each of them because one comes to understand their hopes and fears via their backgrounds, environments and personalities. Crowd pleasing films occasionally get a bad rap for viewing everything through rose-tinted lenses; with humaneness and some nuance, Nahmias pinpoints unexpected substance in her subjects along with ample heart.
Haunted Jukebox 