‘Cookie’ crumbles when placed under scrutiny
Girl Scout cookies are arguably more American than apple pie and at least equally iconic. So it’s hardly surprising that no less than the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have staked their sweet toothes on “Cookie Queens,” a documentary profiling four of the 700,000 young ladies who each year put forward their best approximation of Willy Loman, hopefully with less tragic results.
Directed by Emmy winner Alya Nahmias, the film faithfully follows the template of such previous competitive-kid flicks as “Spellbound,” “Girls State” and “Mad Hot Ballroom” by introducing us to a quartet of diverse youngsters with bubbly personalities. Then, with maximum adorableness, chronicles their individual paths toward triumph or disappointment, with one ultimately proving the alpha child.
What’s different about “Cookie Queens” is that unlike its predecessors, this one involves good-old, cut-throat capitalism. To put it simply, it’s all about the money. As well as the intense pressure placed on girls as young as 5 to prove their worth by how many hundreds of boxes of Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties they can hawk from the break of dawn into the twilight for weeks on end.
It’s telling that Nahmias ignores how this push, push, push, mentality affects the girls academically. We never observe them in the classroom; just out pounding the pavement, approaching random strangers and subjecting them to their best sales pitch. Two even record videos to promote sales on the Internet, while all four follow the tried-and-true of camping out in front of grocery stores, spending time raising cash for the man instead of being kids enjoying life with their friends.
I found it tantamount to child abuse, not to mention breeding a sense of greed in impressionable children, taught their self-worth rests in how many boxes of cookies they can sell in a month or two. It’s sick, I tell you. Particularly when you consider the people getting fat, besides their customers, are the corporate lords profiting biggly off the menial labor of small fries earning but one measly dollar from every $6 box sold.
Maybe it’s just me, but the entire business model turned me off. I mean, don’t we already see the parents of these girls exploited enough by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and other corporations that thrive on the same gig economy these children are being indoctrinated into? Call me a curmudgeon, but that’s how this film produced by the mega-monied Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made me feel.
So it was hard to succumb to the obvious manipulations Nahmias employs to accentuate the cuteness of her four first-name-only subjects: Olive, a 12-year-old Tracy Flick-like dynamo from Charlotte; Nikki, a 9-year-old from Chino, California, driven by a need to match the success of her older sisters; Shannon Elizabeth, an 8-year-old martial arts enthusiast from El Paso whose parents literally mortgage their future on cookie sales; and pint-sized Ara, a 5-year-old diabetic from San Diego.
The four, plus Olive’s best friend, Celia, were obviously selected entirely on the basis of their photogenics, which are off the charts. It’s impossible not to be charmed by all five, which makes the pressure placed on them – and their far-from-wealthy parents – even more appalling. In many ways, they are being used by Nahmias as shamelessly as they are by Girl Scouts of the USA.
Adding to my issues with the movie is the haphazard way a trio of editors has shapelessly spliced together the footage. What’s initially intriguing eventually becomes repetitive. Instead of umpteen shots of the girls huckstering, why not more of the ol’ up-close and personal? Like, how much do they value their education, and their plans for their futures? Do they regret spending so much time unloading cookies?
What we get instead is a microcosm of a rigged economy in which the little guy does all the work so the fat cats can get richer, here to the tune of $800 million per year. That’s a lot of cookie dough, with the leveraged peddlers afforded nary a bite.
Movie review
Cookie Queens
Rated: G
Featuring: Ara E., Shannon Elizabeth S., Nikki B. and Olive G.
Director: Alysa Nahmias
Runtime: 91 minutes
Where: In theaters Aug. 7
Grade: C
