Cookie Queens, which premiered Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival, is an irresistibly adorable documentary about Girl Scout cookies. Executive produced by Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the film celebrates childhood sincerity.
Nikki, 9, is the third sister in a family of Girl Scouts to join. Shannon Elizabeth, 8, is trying to sell enough to go to Cookie Camp. At 5, Ara is the youngest and newest, just a Brownie, only trying to sell 55 boxes.
The families first decide on how much inventory to order. Ara's family only has one stack of boxes, but the other three families' stashes look like warehouses.
This also puts families in a bind. Olive's knows their daughter will move product, but Shannon Elizabeth's family can't afford to pay Girl Scouts for $2700 worth of cookies if she doesn't sell them.
Olive is great at upselling customers on buying an even $30 worth, which adds two boxes to many orders. Whether or not she keeps up sales as an adult, she is rightfully rewarded by adults who respect her honest hustle. To be fair, it's not that hard a sell for those with a sweet tooth.It is heartbreaking when Ara is ignored or turned down because she is so pure and sincere, but unflappable. She is just friends with everybody offering them cookies.
She is also too young to understand that "maybe later" means no, so her wanting to wait until that person comes back is the purest act of generosity. Ara is also diabetic so she can only eat small portions of the cookies herself, but that doesn't temper her enthusiasm.
Nikki seems torn between her family's established practices and wanting to pave her own way. She has also set a fairly high goal to get her family a trip to Europe.
There are brief hints at calling out the Girl Scouts organization for exploiting young girls. Olive points out they do all the work to only get $1 of every $6 sale, and even some businesswomen agree they wouldn't take such a small margin.
Olive even talks to her mother about the pressure she feels to keep selling even when she feels like she's sold enough. Olive is using language most adults struggle to verbalize, and is still somewhat gaslighted that she's not perceiving situations correctly. (If Olive is reading this, you are.)
But, Cookie Queens is mainly about watching the scouts of all ages at work selling cookies to passersby. The film is wholesome entertainment, rooting for open-hearted kids to excel.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
