Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

...and it could not be less. because it has the right actors and locations and a brilliant script. because the irony about stereotypes remains fresh and crazy and seductive. and because it has the perfect couple - de Funes - Galabru, and, more than others parts of series, the small, delicate feeling of the return to a world who remains significant part of life/identity. a lot of adventures and gags. not different but the first three parts. but nice and crazy and touching. because they are the virtues of the brave troops .

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!!!!

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.

and one of De Funes' funniest ever. The fourth movie in the Gendarme series, this story finds the boys in forced retirement from the cushy police job at St. Tropez because they've become too old. When the Adjutant (Galabru) comes to visit De Funes to reminisce about old times, they discover that one of their old group (Fougasse) has had a head injury, has amnesia and is in an institution. They decide to get the old gang back and save him. But to save him, they decide to kidnap him and don their old Gendarme uniforms so they can bring back his memory of who he is. That's where the fun starts, because soon they are pursued by real Gendarmes for impersonating false Gendarmes. It's silly fun but very funny, thanks to brilliant performances by De Funes and Galabru.Throughout the film, there are too many funny moments with De Funes to mention. In the early scenes, I died laughing when De Funes, now a rich man for having married into wealth, punches out his maid repeatedly in the face. De Funes' outlandish comedic rages have often been compared to the manic temper of Donald Duck. In another scene, De Funes is at his absolute best when mumbling incredible gibberish when he and his false Gendarmes get stoned on marijuana in a hippie commune, where they are forced to hide from the real Gendarmes pursuing them. But one of the very best scenes of De Funes in any movie is when the false Gendarmes arrive upon a traffic accident and can't help themselves; they must don their old uniforms and become cops again if only for a few moments. In this scene, De Funes uses a police whistle to clear the accident from the road and, from the sounds he makes, you can actually understand what words in cop language his cadence implies. It's unforgettable. The man was a genius and there will never be another.