The future is quieter, emotionally subdued and grayly mysterious, at least in the small hop forward imagined by filmmaker Michael Almereyda. In the challenging, well-realized "Happy Here and Now," Almereyda has another potential critical hit to rival his last film, "Hamlet," and its commercial destiny looks promising. Immediately engaging one with a succintly intimate tone while tracking parallel stories of wavering young souls living in a New Orleans shorn of its touristy surface, "Happy" succeeds in introducing a sci-fi concept that works best as a metaphor rather than as a prediction of the future.

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