Ok, so even though she was awarded a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress, we’ll give Jessica Alba some credit here. While the quality control was off, we can’t think of any other actress last year whose resume was as varied as Alba’s that had “Valentine’s Day,” “The Killer Inside Me,” “Machete” and “Little Fockers” on it. At least she’s mixing it up. But there are some roles she might have to leave untouched. Such as playing a math teacher.
Variety reports that IFC and MPI have paired up to acquire “An Invisible Sign” which seems like kind of a weird hybrid of “A Beautiful Mind” and “Dangerous Minds” (but sans the “dangerous”). Directed by Marilyn Agrelo (“Mad Hot Ballroom“), written by Pamela Falk and Michael Ellis (who paired on “The Wedding Planner“) and based on Aimee Bender‘s book “An Invisible Sign of My Own” the story follows a math teacher, obsessed with numbers, who battles her own compulsive behaviours, guides her students and deals with deteriorating mental health of her father, a former mathematician. The take away from all this: Jessica Alba is playing a math teacher (and the excellent child actor Bailee Madison as the younger version of her character). All we’ll say is this, if we had a math teacher like Jessica Alba perhaps our tendency to sleep through classes would have been avoided.
The Museum of Mathematics (which we didn’t know existed) and iDeal Partners will be combining efforts to get the word out to women about this film with the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Get Schooled Foundation also looking to get involved. So yeah, it’s one of those movies. Probably really well-intentioned, with a good message that is also painfully boring and obvious and will be shown in schools by teachers looking to kill a couple hours of classtime. But hey, we can never accuse Alba of not trying something different.
The film will hit theaters and VOD in late spring/early summer.