Beautiful, hilarious, and just darn good. Notice the chess box says "Pixar Shorts" on it, which had me chuckling. And faking a heart attack for dentures - how much more original could it be? All in all, this is one of the best Pixar shorts ever.

If you haven't seen "Geri's Game" you probably should. It is, in my opinion, one of Pixar's best short films. It is extremly funny, the rest you can guess (CGI, fluid animation, good music, Pixar's standards). Someone probably already pointed out this, but Geri makes a cameo appearence in "Toy Story 2" as the man who repairs Woody the first time.

Great short. Getting a little dated in terms of what is possible with 3D today, but it still holds up very well in terms of story and animation. The two sides of Geri are distinct and easily spotted even though the model is exactly the same... a nice piece of work for the animators.

The little twist at the end--which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it already--is the best part.

I always thought this short was funny, if not just a little wierd. It's a neat film and worth seeing at least once.

This is quite a short short - just a few minutes, and I watched it several times in a row, because it was fascinating and I suspected there was some deeper, metaphorical meaning behind it (maybe it was just the French character and music that insinuated that).

The scenario: an elderly French guy sits down in a park to play a game of chess with himself. He occupies opposite sides of the board and has two distinct personas: one mild and likeable and meek, the other rather nasty and aggressive. Obviously these two sides of himself are well acquainted and the game has taken place before, probably many times. Furthermore they are fighting for a prize, and mortality is involved at one point.

It has to be a metaphor for something, right? Well, I'm not saying it's not, but I eventually decided it was actually just a peculiar piece of whimsy. Trouble is for me, as a piece of peculiarity it wasn't peculiar enough to be really memorable (like, say 'Rejected', which had me in tears). All the same, it's pretty hard to get out of your brain, and as a study in the animated equivalent of short story techniques - especially characterisation, and in its perfect and inspired editing and camera angles, and its general originality it's a little gem.

I'm giving it three stars, because I prefer bigger gems, and because I can't help feel the thing should have 'clicked' into place at some point, to make some sublime statement, or even to just give you a great gag (the 'click' in 'Rejected of course, is where... well, no I can't tell you that, or it'd wreck it for you if you ever got to see it.)

I can't help but think that one of these days I'm going to change my mind and come back and give this a 4, but until I have some epiphany about it, it gets a three. A short film has to really gobsmack me to get a rating that high, and this one merely impressed me a lot.

EDIT. Some months later. Well that day has come sort of. I've found this film has rather haunted me, and that means they must have been doing something better than I suspected at some level, so it gets another half star.

Brilliant, amusing, truly bizarre. I can't remember, though, whether this was shown with Toy Story or A Bug's Life. Geri made a cameo later as the doll repairman in Toy Story 2, as well.