On a recent unreasonably warm spring day, I walked by a troop of Brownies parked outside a Manhattan Trader Joe’s selling their confectionary wares. In the early morning quiet, their tiny voices sang out: “Girl Scout cookies for sale! Girl Scout cookies for sale! First of the season!”
I watched them kicking at the sidewalk, pulling on their braids, and fiddling with the few badges decorating their vests, these sweet little indoor kids who likely had no interest in learning how to build a fire or pitch a tent. Still, their location outside a snacking mecca—even if chosen by one of their troop leaders—showed signs of ingenuity that I had to respect. So, too, did the fact that there were still Girl Scouts in existence at all, that the organization hadn’t died out in the era of iPad kids and helicopter parents. “What genius little girl bosses,” I thought.
They got my business.
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Years ago, a roommate and I coined the term “couch movie,” a classification of films that may feel broad in theory, but is actually narrow and deeply personal in practice: films that are perfect to put on when, well, sprawled on the couch. I suppose, depending on your viewing habits, countless movies could fit that descriptor, but when I say sprawled on the couch, I mean sprawled in a way where you become one with the couch. Feeling sick? Time for a couch movie. Hungover? Put on a couch movie. Cold and rainy days, lazy Sunday mornings, late Friday nights freshly showered after a night out? All suitable moments to queue up a couch movie.
A couch movie is a form of comfort food, but it is not coddling. It isn’t overly stimulating, but it’s not mind-numbing, either. If at any point in time it was played in heavy rotation on basic cable with commercial interruptions, chances are it’s a couch movie. A couch movie is almost always funny; a little bit stupid and a little bit nostalgic. Your attention is held and you are mildly entertained, but you also lose nothing if you nod off for a minute or get up for a snack or—forgive me—get distracted by playing on your phone.
Troop Beverly Hills (1989) is, objectively, not a particularly great movie. Let’s just get that out of the way right now. It is not a good movie, but it is a perfect couch movie. A light and frothy fish-out-of-water comedy, it’s the kind of film they don’t really make anymore: technically for kids (it pushes against the edges of its PG rating), but with plenty of smartass appeal for the adults who accompanied them to the mall cineplex. It has everything you could want in a couch movie: nostalgia, laughs, great outfits, a few just-shy-of-maudlin heartwarming moments—and Shelley Long giving a comedic performance that (I am only half kidding when I say this) deserves every single award in existence.
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Troop Beverly Hills centers on Phyllis Nefler (Shelley Long), a Beverly Hills housewife going through a messy divorce who decides to become the latest in a string of short-lived troop leaders at the helm of the Wilderness Girls’ Beverly Hills outpost. It’s a decision more boredom and ego-driven (her latest hobby—and cause—du jour) than it is practical, though at least there’s some genuine sincerity motivating Phyllis too, as she uses the opportunity to bond with her daughter (baby Jenny Lewis) in the process.
The girls of Troop Beverly Hills are not too different from the city-dwelling scouts I saw that recent spring day, just a little older and a little more analogue. They’re mostly girls of privilege, whether socially or politically or financially—girls whose parents have glamorous-seeming jobs, like writers and directors and business moguls—who live nowhere near the wilderness and have no real need to forge those skills. This sort of ineptitude may have earned them a sympathetic fondness from the regional council leader, Frances Temple (Audra Lindley), but it makes them the laughingstock among the rest of the Southern California troops, and draws the ire of the downright militaristic Velda Plendor (Betty Thomas)—the district commander-in-chief and leader of the rival Culver City Red Feathers—who takes scouting probably a little too seriously. To Velda, Troop Beverly Hills isn’t so much a threat as it is an embarrassment, an insult to the institution that needs to be gotten rid of once and for all if the Wilderness Girls want to retain their legitimacy.
But does a girl really need to know how to build a fire? Does she actually need to know how to use a compass or read trail signs or tie a bunch of complicated knots? (Okay, well, today, thinking about apocalyptic future scenarios…maybe.) Or is it enough for a scout system to recognize a girl’s potential and strengths across all aspects of life, offer encouragement and direction and community, and turn her into a confident and capable member of society? Sometimes the wild doesn’t refer to a forest. Sometimes the wild is the streets of New York, or the avenues of Beverly Hills, and a girl has to know how to survive that, too.
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Like many ‘80s comedies, much of the humor in Troop Beverly Hills comes from its mockery of wealth. It’s a type of Reagan-era comedy that can skew from savage (Lost in America) to silly (Overboard), and Troop Beverly Hills falls somewhere in the middle. Rich people are ridiculous and out of touch with everyday life and deserve our mockery, but…the mostly-benign ones are kind of entertaining, if you don’t think about it too hard.
Across a series of set pieces, the discrepancy between the real world for most average Americans and the real world for the wealthy of Beverly Hills is put on display for laughs: After a rainstorm strikes the girls’ first campout—at which they had professionally set-up cabanas and cooked chocolate fondue and espresso over the open fire—the girls debunk for a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. (“This what you call roughing it?” “One bathroom for nine people? Yes.”) When the girls lament their lack of badges in comparison to the other troops, Phyllis discovers loopholes for acquiring existing badges (like earning the “grooming” badge with a trip to a luxury salon) and designing their own custom ones. And for what skills do they earn them? Appraising five-figure jewels at Cartier, sitting in on Phyllis’s divorce court hearing, and “gardening with glamour,” among others. To sell enough cookies to participate in the annual Jamboree, Phyllis stages a fashion show, a concert, and a star-studded gala.
It’s only when Velda derides Phyllis for her vapidity—telling her that her lack of any real skills is a danger to the girls come Jamboree time—that any real sort of self-reflection takes place. Velda is a miserable, mean bitch, but she’s also kind of right, and Phyllis knows that. Through tears, she tries to resign her post; leading the girls at the Jamboree would be irresponsible, and she cares about them too much to do that. ‘Tries’ is the operative word here—the girls won’t let her, and so on to the Jamboree they go, determined to prove everyone wrong.
Does Troop Beverly Hills have a bit of a hard time figuring out whether it wants to be a pitch black comedy skewering Reaganomics or a fluffy, money-is-good-even-though-it’s-goofy comedy? Sure. But I’m not really watching this movie for class commentary. Sorry! I’m watching it to see Shelley Long serve in impeccable costumes and give line readings that will be forever remembered in the textbooks of camp.
If we really wanted to get serious about it, we could find some intellectual merit in Troop Beverly Hills. It’s a fascinating time capsule portrait of feminism at a crossroads, in the moment between the waning of the second wave women’s lib movement and the rise of third wave riot grrrl feminism. It’s a muted and muddled Valley Girl feminist manifesto that both leans into sexist stereotypes of women—girls just want to have fun and shop ‘til they drop!—and somehow reclaims them. What’s wrong with a girl loving to shop? It’s not her only interest, and it doesn’t mean she’s not smart, either. Troop Beverly Hills both mocks frivolity and takes it seriously(ish) without ever getting too deep or message-y. It’s easy to imagine a version made in the 2010s that’s rooted in a hacky form of girlboss feminism: Yes, girl! Sell those cookies, mama! Slay the glass ceiling! Lean in, babe! That Troop Beverly Hills walks so close to that line but never quite crosses it is perhaps one of the film’s greatest strengths.
All that being said, at its core, Troop Beverly Hills is a film that makes the case for frivolity. Being a Miss Serious all the time—like Velda—is a joyless existence. Best to find levity when and where you can, celebrating the light things that bring you pleasure in this hell world.
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For years growing up, Troop Beverly Hills was a ubiquitous presence in my life. I didn’t even need to rent or own a copy of it on VHS, since it seemed as if every weekend it was playing on TNT or TBS or USA. It’s very likely that I could perform a one woman show of it from memory. Certain lines are wedged deeply in the space in my brain that once retained the knowledge of a second language and could be put to better use understanding the economy or something important, but alas: “I think the campsite is at Cartier, so to speak.”
To say Troop Beverly Hills warped my brain would be an understatement. When I was old enough to join Girl Scouts myself, I declined, partly because I was informed that the ‘cool girl’ troop was full, but mostly because I was informed that the scouting experience would not actually be anything like Troop Beverly Hills. There would be no five-star hotel slumber parties or massive cookie selling campaigns complete with original songs. Scouting was more like learning how to macramé a friendship bracelet and making sundials and identifying plants that are safe to eat in the woods. Boring and practical and certainly not for me.
As a child, I never grasped that we’re supposed to laugh at Phyllis. She never seemed all that ridiculous to me. Where others saw her as the butt of the joke—her naïveté around what camping actually entails; her wildly outlandish outfits for every scenario; her sort-of shallow materialism; her confident, delusional belief that identifying jewels or going to the salon are learned skills that warrant badges—I saw her as the epitome of glamour and cool. I didn’t care if she wasn’t a typical troop leader, or the stereotypical domesticated housewife or perfect mother. Who cared if she couldn’t open jars on her own or do laundry correctly or cook much of anything? She could pull off incredible and audacious outfits with self-assured confidence. She could throw a great party and socialize with anyone from any standing. She could impart beauty advice and wisdom that I’d never hear in real life—never let a stranger perm your hair, never go to Reno, make friends with your tailor, etc. Phyllis was an example of adult womanhood—and, by extension, motherhood—I aspired to.
Watching Troop Beverly Hills now, I still find it difficult to laugh at Phyllis. Of course I recognize the outsider comedy and marvel at the physical gags that Shelley Long tackles with fearless ease. Rewatching the film with an uninitiated friend recently, I remarked midway through, “She’s everything I want to be when I grow up.” I was only half-joking. As I’ve gotten older, my soft spot has grown to not just encompass the very shallow aspects of the character (that wardrobe!), but the nuances that maturity has granted me the ability to recognize. For all her daffiness, Phyllis Nefler has a genuine heart of gold. She’s kind and respectful to everyone who crosses her path, no matter their social or economic standing. She remains far more gracious than most would when her ex (Craig T. Nelson) starts seeing a much younger woman. And she has an indefatigable sense of confidence and joy; despite a few moments of sulking and feeling sorry for herself, she’s able to overcome self-involvement for the betterment of other people at every turn.
Most of all, she actually cares deeply about the lives of these girls. Her love for her own daughter is so great that she’s willing to leave her comfort zone to genuinely bond with her. That love extends to the rest of the girls, many of whom have absentee parents themselves; she shows up for them time and time again, giving them the kind of attention and care that’s crucial at that preteen age. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done for us?” they ask her when she tries to quit for their own protection. “You’re our role model and our friend. Mrs. Nefler, you took a group of overindulged, unmotivated, alienated preadolescents and gave us renewed sense of self-esteem… You made us like ourselves.”
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The girls of Troop Beverly Hills make it to the Jamboree, and somehow manage to not only outsmart the wilderness, but also to outsmart all the various tricks of sabotage the Red Feathers throw at them throughout the course. They win, against all odds, and—after rescuing an injured and abandoned Velda and dragging her across the finish line—manage to be the bigger people in the process. Winning isn’t really the point of Troop Beverly Hills, though. It’s simply about proving yourself capable enough to be taken seriously, and having fun and looking cute while doing so.
On a recent spring morning after a late night out, a friend and I—feeling hungover even though we hadn’t even had a drink the night before—were drawn outside by the siren call of Girl Scouts hawking the last cookies of the season directly below my apartment. An hour and a half later, arranged on my small couch like Tetris pieces, fists full of Tagalongs, we watched the girls of Troop Beverly Hills celebrate their Jubilee victory. And as they chanted their troop cheer—“We’re the girls from Beverly Hills. Shopping was our greatest skill! After all is said and done, Beverly Hills is number one! Beverly Hills, what a thrill!”—my friend remarked, “What a nice little movie.”
Sometimes that’s all you need.