The other day I had commented that I had not reviewed an anthology film, and I quickly corrected that over site. Today I noticed that I have not watched a film so far during the 2024 Countdown to Halloween that would be considered “kid friendly”. At least I don’t think so, not sure how tightly some of us keep those moral bootstraps tied. But today, for sure I have a movie that is family friendly and perfect for Halloween. Honestly, I misspoke there as it’s possibly perfect for any time of year. First let’s get some of the credits out of the way before we talk about the actual movie. Starring as Nelly in Nelly Rapp Monster Agent is Matilda Gross, a Swedish child actress. Doing the directing is Amanda Adolfsson who is also Swedish. You see where this is going, right? Yes, the film is from Sweden, and it is in Swedish but there is a dubbed version available, so it works just fine for those of us that do not speak Swedish.
Also starring as Hannibal, Nelly’s uncle, is Johan Rheborg who is a comedian and well known in Sweden from what I understand. Hannibal’s assistant, I call her that because I don’t know what she is really, maybe a maid, perhaps a girlfriend or even his wife. But that’s not important, her name is Lena-Sleva and she is played by another Swedish comedian, Marianne Morck. Nelly is taken to her uncles estate to spend a vacation there. With Nelly is her Basset hound London, who is adorable. Hannibal’s mansion is wonderfully spooky and immediately you can tell all is not as it would seem here. Soon enough Nelly discovers her uncle is hiding a secret. When Nelly discovers his secret, she is driven into a world full of vampires, werewolves, ghosts and there’s even a little Frankenstein girl. Nelly Rapp Monster Agent grabbed my attention with it’s beautiful color pallet, costumes, make-up and hardly a sniff of CGI special effects.
The story is interesting, and while I know it’s aimed at preteens, I adored it. The film won two awards (they might be like our Oscars but what do I know) one for make-up and one for costume and hair and as I mentioned; both well deserved. Here’s the deal, if you’re having a Halloween party for your 10-year-old and his or her friends, you could do worse for entertainment by showing them this. I was completely entertained, and when I wasn’t laughing out loud, I still had a smile on my face. There’s a Disney movie named Halloweentown that I love and watch every year at this time. In fact, I’ve reviewed it before, and it can be found here: Halloweentown Blogger post And let me tell you, Nelly Rapp, for my money, is even better than Halloweentown. So now that I’ve said that, since I rated Halloweentown (which I might have a review of the third film in the series later this month) three and a half, I have no choice but to give Nelly Rapp Monster Agent an unbelievable four crossbows out of five. The “Guilty Pleasure Alarm” has been tripped!
