Fantasia 2025 Review: STRAIGHT OUTTA SPACE, A Sci-fi Comedy With Good Intentions

In the low-income neighborhood of Schijndrecht, best friends Amin and Mitchell work as street coaches, helping residents and maintaining order. But everything changes when the area faces redevelopment plans, so Amin considers moving away with his girlfriend, Stef. However, an alien invasion turns locals into slimy, mind-controlled creatures. With the neighborhood sealed off, the duo must rally a quirky group of residents to defend their home and prove themselves.

 

Director Michael Middelkoop and his co-writers, Nico van den Brink and Daan Bakker present the Dutch sci-fi comedy, Straight Outta Space (Straatcoaches vs Aliens), because no one outside of the Netherlands knows what a street coach is. Also, public housing is ghetto (do the kids still say that these days?), apparently, so why not go all in on the international title. Until you see it for yourself, think of a street coach as someone like a Guardian Angel in the U.S. or a community advocate that cycles around the property keeping an eye on things.  

 

Everyone in this story has jokes, but the heavy lifting is done by Oscar Aerts and Défano Holwijn as the two police officers who run a social media account while on the job. Daniël Kolf's Mitchell is essentially a physically based comedy role, the banana man to his straight man, Shahine El-Hamus’s Amin. Sinem Kavus is the no-nonsense drug dealer Panter who sells helium to local kids who are none the wiser. 

 

Comedy is subjective but there are laughs to be had in this one. Quite a few laughs come from gross out gags involving the aliens and physical comedy from the aforementioned character, Mitchell, and the two cops, Ivo and Rogier. Comedy also comes by way of the town’s leadership and how they handle the situation developing in Schijndrecht. It is a case of bureaucracy meets the bizarre as the message is timely and appropriate - the governing bodies don’t care about the lower classes. To that this story is universal and exploited for comic effect. 

 

Sci-fi elements are mostly left to the host bodies of the invading aliens. We do not get to see much more than a tentacle here and there before the makeup department takes over on the scores of victims. A little disappointing but this is a story about some scrappy neighbours who set out to save their own from this invasion and also the developers looking to tear everything down. The aliens are not the only enemy here. 

 

Truthfully, Straight Outta Space is an entertaining mix of comedy, sci-fi, horror, and action. There is a scrappy charm that holds it all together. In the end, the reality is, there’s just nothing from the whole that makes this one stand out. Having your own version of something is great, and on the international stage relatability is okay but no one is going to come up to you and say, you gotta check this one out.

 

Works well for casual viewing, but it won’t be required.