Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
It is 1943 in Paris. Like so many others, the Bourbelle family's home has been taken over by the Germans and they now live in their cellar. Little do they know that the son, Guy-Hubert Bourdelle, is far from being the cowardly hairdresser he pretends. He is in truth the Germans’ most feared opponent: le super-résistant!
A French satirical comedy based on a stage play, 'Gramps Is in the Resistance' offers a lively parody of WWII Resistance tropes and Nazi occupation clichés. The plot is serviceable farce built on the double-identity premise and family comedy, functional but not tightly constructed. The acting fits the broad theatrical style inherited from the stage source. Cinematography is workmanlike TV-adjacent staging without distinctive visual flair. The film has some novelty in its irreverent, carnivalesque take on French Resistance mythology — a fairly rare satirical angle — but it remains rooted in theatrical farce conventions. The ending resolves predictably within genre expectations without much punch.