Review: 'Cookie Queens' is a sunny, heartwarming documentary that follows four girls as they strive to sell Girl Scout cookies.

There’s probably a hard-hitting documentary to be made about the system in which thousands of pre-teen girls toil away several late-winter weekends selling a sugar-filled product for $6 a box, propping up an $800 million-a-year industry for which they get paid in trips and trinkets and not in cash.

“Cookie Queens” is not that documentary. Instead, it’s a light and breezy look at four girls, ranging in age from 5 to 12, who work hard to succeed at selling Girl Scout cookies. 

Director Alysa Nahmias follows four girls from across the country working to meet their cookie-selling goals. They are:

• Olive, 12, in Charlotte, N.C., who has her own website to promote herself and her cookie sales. She holds the state record for most cookies sold in a season, around 8,700, but this year she sets herself a lower goal of 4,000 boxes sold.

• Shannon Elizabeth, 8, in El Paso, Texas, has just become a Brownie, and wants to sell 2,750 boxes so she can earn a backpack — and enough money for her troop that she can attend Girl Scout camp in the summer.

• Ara, 5, in San Diego, is selling cookies for the first time, and has set a goal of just 55 boxes this season. Ara, with her parents’ help, also is managing her diabetes – and wonders why the Girl Scouts don’t make a sugar-free variety.

• Nikki, 9, in Chico, Calif., aims to follow in the footsteps of her teen sisters, Naya and Nala, who have been champion cookie sellers in past years.

Nahmias follows the four girls through the six-week cookie season in February and March, and the cyclical nature of the selling. The first weeks are full, as customers get excited to see the Samoas and Tagalongs and Thin Mints return. But a few weeks later, the novelty has worn off and the girls have to hustle to make their goals.

The movie also shows what the parents go through in supporting their girls. Olive’s mom and Nikki’s mom are both veterans of the cookie life, and support their girls and sometimes get, sorry to say it, a little pushy. Then there are Shannon Elizabeth’s parents, who worry about whether they can afford the upfront costs of cookie selling — in which they pledge to pay for cases of cookies in the hopes they can sell them all. 

“Cookie Queens” does not approach the Girl Scout cookie season with cynicism or with a dark view of how it’s a microcosm of American capitalism. It shows these girls as saleswomen and strivers, but first and foremost it shows them as little girls, finding fun, hope and opportunity through sugary treats.

——

‘Cookie Queens’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 7, in theaters. Rated G. Running time: 91 minutes.