Following the trail of great classics about body switches like The Hot Chick (2002) and Prelude to a Kiss (1992), Uyoyou Adia’s Life, which she writes and directs, is a moral drama about contentment. The light-hearted, didactic film presses on the importance of perspective when we yearn for another’s life. While the film has its heart in a good place, it comes off as heavy-handed in select spots, and apparently, its core moral—contentment—isn’t convincingly justified. 

Ema (Omowumi Dada) and Yinka (Efe Irele) are on either end of the social class. Ema works in a successful advertising agency that sets her comfortably in upper-class Lagos. While she apparently lives the dream of the modern woman, she yearns for another life in which she is a dancer. So much that it haunts her dreams. Yinka (Efe Irele), on the other side of Lagos, is a passionate dancer crippled by debt and poverty. She wants a different life of comfort. After both of them separately encounter a mysterious old woman (Kate Adepegba) who warns them about contentment, they wake the next day in the other person’s body. They find idealised life of the other they imagined is not what they think it is. 

The core problem with Life is that the reasons presented to back the film’s central philosophy of contentment, especially for Ema, aren’t convincing. How films like this work is that the viewer discovers a truth about life, themselves, and existence after the switch. We don’t feel like we spent enough time or that each character experienced the other’s specific reality long enough—Ema doesn’t really dance as Yinka, and neither does Yinka experience her near-toxic workplace as Ema. Instead, they approach their new lives with new bodies but their old mindsets, and they leave as same, which only accentuates the pre-established problems. 

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As for Ema, she is a wealthy woman in a difficult Nigerian economy. Of course, she has black tax to pay. Understandably, it can be overwhelming, but it does not look like it cripples her financially—she has a personal driver. And that work, which she funds this life with, which gives her the time to attend dance shows, isn’t the hindrance the film wants us to believe it is. She could easily take weekend dance classes. There is no misplaced destiny hindered by her occupation, as the film would have us believe. And this jeopardises the didactic tone it delivers itself.

Omowumi Dada and Efe Irele do what they can, but the performances won’t knock anybody off. The actors show up, deliver their roles, and return home. Nothing more. There are some middling performances, but nothing so significant that it tanks the film. The real problem is the core conflict. Ema’s conflict isn’t convincing enough, and neither is the resolution. 

Life is a glossy film that suffices visually. The warm tone and simple compositions serve their purposes, but really, nothing more. It is by no means a terrible film, but it is not good either. There are great templates for how films like this can be made, and Life only ticks off the premise. This is, at best, a mediocre film. The contemporary Nollywood malaise continues.

L.I.F.E premiered on Prime Video on February 15, 2024.

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Side Musings

• The film is quite slow. The switch happens at 40 minutes, and honestly, it should have happened earlier because the film already set up the important bits long before then.
• Those dance choreographies aren’t great.