The Gendarme Takes Off
The Gendarme Takes Off
| 28 October 1970 (USA)
The Gendarme Takes Off Trailers

The whole clique of Cruchot's police station is retired. Now he lives with his rich wife in her castle - and is bored almost to death. He fights with the butler, because he isn't even allowed to do the simple works. But when one of the clique suffers from amnesia after an accident, all of the others reunite and kidnap him, to take him on a tour to their old working places and through their memories. In their old uniforms they turn St. Tropez upside down.

Reviews
ma-cortes

This is a very entertaining outing about Marechal Ludovic Cruchot(Louis De Funes) along with his gendarmes group(Michael Galabru,Jean Lefebre,Guy Grosso,Michael Modo) are prematurely retired. Six months later,Cruchot retires into mansion her rich wife(Claude Gensac) where lives a boring life. But comes his pal Marechal(Michael Galabru) remembering old times. Cruchot has a museum of records and both remember their nostalgics adventures in the Gendarmerie Nationale, as they memorize images from'Gendarmes in N.Y, ' Gendarme get married' and 'Gendarme at St Tropez' when Lucien(Jean Lefebre) is obligated to nude himself for chasing nudists . When Lucien is interned in a clinic caused by lost memory, the group is reunited and then they go into action and impersonate again as gendarmes . The gendarmes outfit undergo several adventures,moving in disguise, dressing as hippies, smoking marijuana, and terminating into a hippie commune where everybody say: I love you.This time gendarmes aren't struggling with persistent nude swimmers but they protect them from parachuted gendarmes.Meantime they're pursued by real gendarmes and hid under a sheep flock. Besides the nuns who appeared previous episodes ask their help but five children have disappeared. Then the gendarmes wind up pursued by an atomic rocket.This enjoyable French comedy upon the likable gendarmes packs crazy humor,lively situations amusement and too much fun. Louis De Funes, as always, stooges, grimaces and intense mocking faces . Highlights are the mimic gesticulation with a priest, and the conversation via whistle during a traffic jam. Again Claude Gensac,as Ludovic's spouse, she collaborated with Funes in numerous films, often playing his character's wife. Luminous local photography under St. Tropez's blue sky . Lively music score by Raymond Lefebre , includes the usual leitmotif , musical background in habitual ending parade.The picture is professionally directed and ingeniously written by customary director, Jean Girault.Another movies about Cruchot series are : ¨Gendarme of Saiz Tropez, Gendarme Get married, Gendarme and creatures of outer space and Gendarme and the Gendarmettes¨ , the last acting of the great Louis De Funes, an authentic farceur.

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dalek69

i totally agree with the first review! This film is "wet yourself" laugh out loud funny, funny, funny!!!! it is definitely hilarious. At the start of the film, De Funès is very convincing as the bored rich man who longs for his former job, as he is not allowed to do anything strenuous, but WANTS to! (spoiler: he is lifted on to a horse with a forklift, fishes are put on his hook in the pond by a diver!). then, when he gets together with his old gendarme-mates, who are also bored without their old job, the film really starts to get hilarious. his usual manic gesturing and shouting is very funny, the scene where they all manage a traffic congestion in their old uniforms as "gendarmes" again, is brilliant ("we got to aggravate a minister"!!!), they end up in a hippie-car and in a hippie community smoking pot (very funny!), there is mad, hilarious fast (speeded up film) driving with lots of people crammed in and sticking out of cars, including a scene with the mad,"wild" nun, now two of them!, who also drive like mad, which is a brilliant bit in (almost?) every gendarme-film. toward the end portion of the film it all gets quite silly, real farce, but all very amusing, laugh out loud. the nudist-gag from film one is also "recycled", with a twist!all in all, a hilarious film, one of the best,maybe THE best, gendarme-films with Louis de Funès, together with part 3 of this series. must-see for comedy/slapstick/farce-fans and the humor is timeless. thumbs up!!!!

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dbdumonteil

Now that Cruchot is married with Josepha,now that he is rich ,now that he has got nothing to do but rest in his missus's desirable mansion,what is left for him to do? Retirement is not his cup of tea and he feels nostalgic for the good old time when he was a gendarme and he had fun with his colleagues and his superior Gerber (Michel Galabru).He finds back his old pals,and they come back to work,in an unofficial capacity.Their good humor will come back again too.Of course Sister Marie-Benedicte (and mother superior)character is featured ,but Cruchot's daughter ,Nicole ,is absent for the first time in the series.She will never appear afterward.

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steve-667

In the serie of gendarme-pictures is this one of the funniest. Cruchot and his men are on a tour down memory lane. They are playing with their young successors. Hilarious are the scenes when they visit a hippy community. This is some fine piece of facial improvisation. The cast is as always superb! This is how comedy should be. Really overdone but with typical style and some fine performances by two of the funniest French actors ever. Funes and Galabru makes this one incroyable! 4,5 out of 5.

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