I Watched The Movie, "Breath of Life" So You Don't Have To

Once upon a time, an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity trended on the internet. I did the dirty work of actually reading and recapping it. The article was so popular that I decided to make my recaps into a weekly series named “So You Don’t Have To “, where I find batshit crazy pieces of media (books, movies, etc.) and recap them for your pleasure.

“Timi, a gifted clergyman, turns into an old lonely curmudgeon when his family is tragically taken from him. Until Elijah, a humble man with big dreams of becoming a priest, comes into his life. Through Elijah, Timi learns to live again and realises the purpose for all his gifts and wealth.”

– The movie’s synopsis from Prime Video

The movie starts with a CGI scene set in the year 2060. We see an older man in a wheelchair and a woman behind him at a graveyard, staring at a group of holographic tombstones.

I’m excited because I think the movie is set in the future. My excitement disappears when the film takes us back to 1953 and begins a round of narration so fucking long it would give the Cinema Sins guy several heart attacks.

I’m not even kidding. I thought the narrator was there to set the scene and then leave, but he’s a major presence in the movie for at least ONE HOUR.

The narration covers a shit ton of back story for a man named Timi — who the narrator refers to as his father — so I’ll do my best to speed through it.

Timi (Ademola Adedoyin) is an exceptional young Nigerian who is smart and can fluently speak 16 languages. He also has what I can only describe as mutant lungs and can stay underwater without coming up for long periods. The longest amount of time he’s done this for is 57 minutes.

The fact that the American government doesn’t kidnap and run tests on him after this feat is further proof that this movie is taking place in a whole other timeline.

Timi becomes a reverend and marries a woman named Bridget (Eku Edewor).

If you can’t tell, I have an enormous crush on Eku Edewor.

Tragedy strikes when Timi and his daughter are at a carnival and witness a murder committed by a notorious thug hilariously named Baby Fire. Baby Fire is inexplicably wearing the worst-looking civil servant wig you’ve ever seen. Gaze upon it.

Timi agrees to snitch on Baby Fire in court, hoping they can finally put him in jail, but Baby Fire has some powerful white friends and is acquitted. Baby Fire, eager to show Timi that snitches get stitches and end up in ditches, gets back at Timi by kidnapping Timi’s wife and daughter and setting them on fire right in front of him.

After grieving for nine straight days without moving from the spot where his wife and daughter were barbecued, Timi decides to take matters into his own hands since God won’t. He kills Baby Fire and sets Baby Fire’s house on fire to cover his tracks. He then abandons the clergy life, closes down the church, and tries to kill himself in many ways — including drinking a jumbo-sized tub of bleach.

None of the suicide attempts work because God doesn’t want him dead yet (?) Anyway, decades pass, and Timi has aged into a whole other actor.

For those who don’t know, “The Legend of Gatuso” is an unintentionally hilarious and terribly made Nollywood rip-off “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” How THEE Wale Ojo ended up in it will always be one of life’s greatest mysteries. Here’s the movie’s poster.

Look at him posing! Sjdjdhfsjkhfdjhs!

Let’s get back to “Breath of Life.”

Timi has become a grumpy, impatient recluse who’s looking to hire a house manager but can’t stop, won’t stop shooting at the applicants when they annoy him.

Elijah (Chimezie Imo), the movie’s narrator and fresh-eyed Jesus baby, sashays into the movie’s plot. Elijah is here to apply for the position of House Manager and wanders into the house without knocking. Timi asks who the hell Elijah is, triggering Elijah’s asthma.

After a Looney Tunes-style sequence where Timi hires Elijah on the spot and proceeds to make Elijah fry eggs a hundred times until he gets it the way Timi likes, Elijah decides to start a weekly bible study group at the old abandoned church. He knows Timi hates everything related to God and religion, so he holds the bible study during Timi’s siesta times. While sharing flyers at the local hospital to raise awareness for the bible study, he spots a volunteer nurse named Anna (Geneveva Umeh). You can guess what happens next.

Eager to get Anna’s attention but knowing he has no rizz, Elijah emotionally manipulates the hospital’s patients into getting Anna to attend bible study. It works, and Anna shows up at the church after one of the meetings to talk to him. When he tries to reply to her, this happens.

He has his inhaler with him, though, so all’s good. They bond as he walks her home, and they pretty much start dating. Months pass, and they’re at the point where they’re doing this during bible study meetings:

Things are going well until Timi finds out Elijah has been having bible studies behind his back.

Timi threatens to fire Elijah. Elijah begs, and Timi changes his mind. A lot of nothing happens. There’s a touching scene where Timi watches old home movies starring his now-dead wife and daughter. Things take a turn for the unintentionally hilarious when young Timi shows up in a frame of the home movie he’s watching, holding the camera that’s supposed to be recording the film.

At some point, Timi and Elijah bond over reading.

Meanwhile, Anna decides that she MUST meet Timi for some reason. Against Elijah’s wishes, Anna shows up at Timi’s house. Timi has no idea who she is and is like:

Anna refuses to take no for an answer and knocks again. This time, Timi comes out with a gun, causing her to fall like a horror movie final girl and cut her leg. He takes pity on her and brings her in to treat her wound. Elijah returns from a grocery run to see this and dramatically drops a crate of eggs. Anna begins coming to the house more, and Timi is first upset by it.

Then just doesn’t give a shit.

Anna invites Elijah to meet her RICH ASS parents. Her mother, Mrs Okonkwo (Ashionye Michelle-Raccah), is sweet and welcoming but becomes uncomfortable when she finds out that Elijah is the one running the town bible study. We soon find out why when Anna’s father, Mr Okonkwo (Sam Dede), comes in and turns out to be a guy who wants to buy the church to tear it down and build a hotel. Mr Okonkwo asks Elijah to get out of his house. Elijah discovers that to save the church, he has to come up with N49 million.

Yes, this movie has suddenly become a “we have to raise money to save the rec centre ” type of thing. Anna tries to get Mr Timi to pay the money in the most entitled way possible.

Timi comes up with a way for them to save the church. It has something to do with colonial land rights. I don’t know. You think the movie is about to end when Elijah has another asthma attack, just as he and Anna are about to bump genitals.

Elijah is taken to the hospital, and it’s revealed that what he thought was asthma was actually his lungs failing. To survive, he’ll need lung transplants. Timi and Anna sit over a plate of unseasoned eggs to cry.

Then Timi decides to legally adopt Elijah, also willing his fortune and donating his mutant lungs to him. He decides that this is the reason God didn’t let him die from his suicide attempts.