Retirement home: Kev Adams takes a tour of the nursing home (review)

An ensemble comedy full of good feelings and big tricks.

Guess who's back ? After a trip to Prime Video (Haters) and in Claude Lelouch's fiftieth feature film (Love is better than life), Kev Adams was back with Retirement home, in February 2022, of which he is also the co-writer. A comedy to (re)watch this evening on TF1, at a time when its sequel is going strong on the big screen. Here is our review, originally published for its theatrical release.

Retirement home 2 opens the L'Alpe d'Huez festival with fanfare

Involuntarily topical – the filming took place last year -, the film by Thomas Gilou (the trilogy The truth if I lie) features a director of a residence for the elderly who terrorizes his residents and takes advantage of their money. Adams plays Milann, a 30-year-old loser in debt and lazy, who spends his evenings drinking beers and playing consoles. Following an unfortunate event, he narrowly escapes prison in exchange for 300 hours of community service in the said retirement home. No luck, Milann is allergic to old people. After a complicated beginning, he nevertheless becomes very close to a gang of seven inseparable residents, whose exfiltration he prepares… The great Escape in nursing homes? False lead, obviously.

Choral comedy with all that French cinema has of actors of the third age (Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Prévost, Liliane Rovère, Jean-Luc Bideau, Marthe Villalonga…), the film remains stuck at the stage of family entertainment against a backdrop of intergenerational reconciliation . Lots of good feelings therefore, despite certain scenes with Depardieu (as an old embittered boxer) and Bideau (whose charisma only grows with age) which almost manage to move. But the soulless production, the not very happy gags and the XXL strings of the story – Antoine Duléry as a villain worthy of Scooby-Doo – prevent Retirement home to take off. Kev Adams may give everything he can, but the poorly designed script always catches up with him in the end.

Trailer :

Chantal Ladesou and Jean Reno try to decipher Generation Z slang at Michou