All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

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.

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.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This is a five-minute animated short film from almost 20 years ago. Basically all we see in this short film is how an old man plays chess against himself and tricks himself at some point to victory. This is a decent idea on make-believe. If the camera is in the right position, we do not realize that he is the only one playing if we hadn't already known from the start. Maybe this revelation would have been better at the end. Anyway, my guess is that the old guy is slightly senile and that is why he believes himself that he is actually playing somebody else. He is looking down on the chess board, so he does not perceive nobody is sitting at the other side just like we don't see it when we only see the old man. Attention also to how one of the "two" players is clearly meaner and really willing to win, while the other certainly looks much more careful and defensive, even cowers down at one point. But he is as playful a trickster as his enemy. He even fakes a heart attack at one point.The film's director is Jan Pinkava and he did not have a full feature career as I would have expected after this short film. The only other impact he made was by writing "Ratatouille" 10 years after "Geri's Game. But maybe it's fine this way as I really wasn't too wowed by this short film. The animation is good, but there is really nothing entertaining to the whole story about it in my opinion. I am a bit surprised to see it won an Oscar. To me, it is one of Pixar's worst efforts sadly.

I remember getting a kick of this short repeatedly when I saw Bug's Life in the theater repeatedly eight years back. Mostly because it sticks to the best rules of a little animated short like this. Less is more with the dialog, and editing and position of the camera are crucial. The filmmaker behind this, who hasn't done much aside from this short, is like a very wise film-student. In most film-student shorts, a good chunk of the goal in making 4 or 5 minute films is to put in as much information as possible while keeping it to the point and still having a story. The story here is a guy playing chess, Er, with himself, and getting into a competition to the death (well, almost) in having a check-mate. Geri's laughs and little facial gestures on either side are really genius in their own way, and the ending is one of those that puts a smile on your face. The music is also, in its own way, funny by way of being just a lowly accordion applying the backup to this wacky little scenario. Probably ranks up there with my very favorite Pixar shorts, worth another look on the Bug's Life DVD for sure.

This short film was made in 1997 then later shown with A Bug's Life back in 1998.It's a simple story for a Pixar short. It involves Geri an old man playing chess by himself. It keeps cutting from left to the right that it actually makes you believe he's playing with another guy who's actually just him.The animation is well done. Geri does look like an old man with the detail of the skin and the way he walks and acts.All Pixar fans will like this short as well as many other ones like Luxo Jr., Tin Toy, etc.

Pixar, especially now that Monsters, Inc. (preceded by the endlessly amusing For The Birds) has been released, is quickly becoming more and more famous for the tremendous quality of the short short animated films that precede their feature films. Geri's Game, which can be seen before A Bug's Life, is one of my favorite of all of Pizar's short animated films. It's a testament to the quality of the film that the punchline (that Geri is playing chess against himself) is not only revealed in the film's tagline, but is also clearly revealed right at the beginning of the film, and yet it still retains the surprising and amusing affect. The editing in this film is so well-done that, as the chess game switches back and forth between Geri and his alter ego, you almost forget that you already saw that he is alone in the park and is therefore playing against himself in this heated game. I just learned from one of the other IMDb reviewers that Pixar dedicated enormous resources just for such a minor detail as to get Geri's coat to crease just right, and that is exactly the kind of thing that makes a good film, especially a short one. That is a tiny detail, but Pixar is so determined for their films to look just right that it is no surprise that they are now winning Oscars left and right for those films. Pixar spends all of the money that they put into their films in just the right places, and this can clearly be seen in the final product. The purpose of these short film is clearly just to add to the huge amount of entertainment that is almost invariably involved in watching a Pixar film, because they can obviously not serve any other purpose, being so short. It's obvious that they are not put in to increase the viewing time of the sometimes rather short films that Pixar puts out, but rather just to increase the enjoyment derived from their films. When you go to see a Pixar film, you get more than your money's worth, and not because the films take up more of your time, but because the quality is so high. If anything, people should be grateful that the people at Pixar are able to create such huge amounts of entertainment in relatively short periods of time, unless you have nothing better to do than spend your days in a movie theater. While that is definitely how I would personally LIKE to spend my days, I just don't have the time, and I am grateful that Pixar is so good at what they do that they are able to provide entertainment of such high quality and not take up two and a half hours of my time. Bravo!