Well Go USA Entertainment has announced they’re bringing the Vietnamese family film Maika: The Girl From Another Galaxy to the US via digital distibution. The movie will be offered in English dub form starting next week.
Maika is about a young boy who’s going through some rough patches in life: his mother is dead of an unspecified illness and his father just moved him to a new neighborhood where he has no friends. So he’s pleased as punch to discover a crashed spaceship and a purple-haired girl emerging from it. Though Maika has trouble adapting to Earthling culture, she becomes a fast replacement for his lack of social interactions and missing maternal figure.
This whole setup obviously sounds familiar, like an off-brand variant of a classic movie…it doesn’t help that Maika’s ultimate goal is to find a way to contact her home planet and get a ride back. It’s common for foreign countries to create localized knockoffs of American hits (just like it’s common for America to do the same…”The Office” is one example). So is Maika an ET ripoff or not? …Yes and no.
Maika: The Girl From Another Galaxy is actually based on a Czechoslovakian television series that became a hit in Vietnam during the 1970s — predating ET. We’re told it became so popular in that country that “Maika” became a common name for babies for a while. So while this movie obviously takes a lot of influence for its plot beats from ET, the actual source for the characters and general idea is different. But the fact that ET turned 40 this summer probably factored into Maika being adapted into a film this present day. Timing is everything.
Maika: The Girl From Another Galaxy will be available to watch on digital starting September 6.
Glad the alien is a cute kid instead of a paper mache monstrosity. E.T gave me nightmares as a kid.
They should release an English dub version for dyslexic people like me who cannot read. I dictate things to Alexa because I can’t spell.
I’ve just finished seeing this uplifting and endearing film. I loved every single second of it, even the way in which the Vietnamese way of life was portrayed. Very strongly suggested! I would want to express my gratitude for distributor’s efforts in introducing Vietnamese representation to mainstream media.
This is such a delightfully intriguing and amazingly promising. It takes me back to an era when movies could take you on an experience that you actually felt was feasible. Now it is all virtue signalling.
The movie seems very interesting in deed. I can’t wait for the English version part of it so that I can fully understand the theme of the movie. However the little girl character Maika is very amazing.
It can be popular but it will not reach top of list since Americans don’t like subs. That is fact.