Happy Review: Christopher Meloni plays a contract killer who can’t shake an imaginary friend,

The central premise of “Happy!,” drawn from the original comics, is that a winged, blue unicorn — a donkey-unicorn (a donki-corn?). is haunting (or is it helping?) an ex-cop turned hitman named Nick (Christopher Meloni).

Sure…

Nick’s got some issues, like so many swaggering protagonists of bloody comic books, do: he drinks, he gambles, he murders, he doesn’t call home.

Christopher Meloni dies twice in the first 20 minutes of Happy! and he’s the show’s hero. Though hero is a strong word, and he’s never quite dead. When we meet Meloni’s Nick Sax, he points a couple guns at his head and pulls a couple triggers.

A few hours, four murdered gangsters, and one heart attack later, Nick wakes up in an ambulance and sees a tiny flying blue unicorn named Happy.

But that’s about to change, sort of. Happy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) — a furry, upbeat, anthropomorphized fantasy creation — is his new imaginary friend. The adorable animal sings him a song, and Nick pulls a gun on a paramedic, demanding morphine. But Happy has a Christmas mission for ol’ Nick.

A creepy old man dressed as Santa Claus has been kidnapping children and imprisoning them in crates.

Only Happy, and Nick can get them out.

Oh, and one of those children is Nick’s!

Nick’s last assignment is to kill a pair of gangster brothers, which makes him the target of both organized crime and the police force he left in disgrace.

The fast pace certainly helps keep him there. Within less than an hour, there are mob thugs looking for Sax, cops looking for Sax, angry members of his past looking for Sax — and Sax is looking for quite a few things himself: drinks, drugs, a pot of coffee, the occasional defibrillation.

By the end of the first hour, you’ll also wonder whether Happy! can possibly maintain the frenetic comic tenseness of the pilot?

He does…

And the pilot episode is directed by Brian Taylor, who made the Crank movies with Mark Neveldine. If you’re a Crank fan — guilty, God help me! — you’ll recognize the kaleidoscopic action and frat-boy humor taken to quirky extremes.

Happy! is actually based on a comic book by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson. Morrison’s written better comics — Doom Patrol, The Invisibles, The Filth — but this is his first to get a live-action adaptation. That other stuff is psychedelic, idiosyncratic — so, difficult to film.

But, um, there’s a unicorn! Oswalt gives Happy a sweetness edging into lunacy, and there’s a dark possibility that we’re witnessing this poor creature’s corruption.

The idea is to contrast the pessimism of Nick Sax with the optimism of Happy. While this doesn’t quite balance things out — the show definitely stays on the dark side — it provides Happy! with a much-needed variety of tone.

It’s a great role for Meloni, who exudes a Bruce Willis-esque cocky cool as Nick. His grizzled misanthropy leads to some fantastic one-liners — “My life is an ever-swirling toilet that just won’t flush” — and Meloni handles the demanding fight scenes with convincing vigor.

THE ENDING IS NIGH:

Though the season 1 finale ‘I Am the Future’ follows a fairly unsurprising path, turning low-rent hitman Nick Sax’s imaginary friend-filled journey to find his estranged daughter into another redemption story, there’s just enough left in the tank to tease another, possibly even weirder season.

This is our kind of dirty, a comic book adaptation with all of the panache as the Italian Mob will allow.

Ho, Ho, Ho.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Happy! certainly isn’t for everyone, but its appealingly oddball concept and strong performances from Chris Meloni and Patton Oswalt make for an ENTERTAINING and Bloodthirsty ride through the streets of good old New York. It is unique, quirky and thoroughly entertaining as hell.

5/5 STARS