It\u2019s these stressors that become a major theme of the film. Nikki and her sisters are instructed to put effort into their appearances on sale days, with advice like \u201cthe cuter you look the more cookies you\u2019ll sell.\u201d Olive goes back and forth on whether she wants to continue selling at this level in the future; it\u2019s their thing, their place in the troop, she says. Who are they if they don\u2019t continue at this level? In addition, Olive calls out the Girl Scouts organization for the amount of money troops get per box ($1, when each box costs $6), calling it \u201cessentially child labor.\u201d As the oldest Scout profiled, she\u2019s on the cusp of moving into puberty and teen-dom. Little adults in the making, 12 going on 42, she and her fellow Scout friend Celia wax poetic about make-up and goals big and small in between high-level selling and the etiquette class they\u2019re both enrolled in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cookie Queens carefully and lovingly steers us through a full cookie season: the highs, the lows, and all the inbetweens. Director Alysa Nahmias (Unfinished Spaces, 2011; The New Bauhaus, 2019) spent months with the girls, their families, and their troops, highlighting the dichotomy between the pressurized, grown-up world of entrepreneurship and commerce against the relative ease that some experience in childhood. Fully observational, no interviews, we\u2019re immersed in these four girls\u2019 experiences: the stress, the fun, the learning. But more than anything, we bear witness to the wonder of childhood all over again, the feeling that anything is possible, the newness of so many things. I guarantee that you won\u2019t see anything more adorable on screen this year than Ara calling people on the phone to sell boxes or Nikki singing her cookie song or Olive saying they want to be a Supreme Court justice or Shannon Elizabeth hanging out with her troop. From start to finish, Cookie Queens is heart-meltingly cute.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the film fully explores the challenges of transitioning from childhood to puberty, I was left with some questions related to the socioeconomic aspects of cookie selling. What is it like to be a child thrust into the complex world of commerce when it meets one\u2019s local community? Is one backyard more conducive to the task versus another? How much does who you know and a family\u2019s socioeconomic status help high-level selling? We get light touches on these but ultimately the film doesn\u2019t take sides or provide any solid arguments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard growing up, but at least Ara, Nikki, Olive, and Shannon Elizabeth have their troops to get through it together. Cookie Queens is one of the most special films I\u2019ve had the pleasure of watching – it may not have all the answers, but neither do we, no matter our age, no matter if we sold zero boxes of cookies (me) or 12,000 (Olive). If you\u2019re looking for something that will warm your heart, look no further than this film. And the next time you see Girl Scouts selling cookies, make sure to buy a box or two. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s these stressors that become a major theme of the film. Nikki and her sisters are instructed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-320415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}