Peter Pan Live

What a waste of three hours.  We should have read and listened to Christmas music or watched Gravity on DVD.  (Yes, we're old, we watch DVDs.)  But J had seen the Mary Martin production in 1955 and I thought it would be a nostalgia trip for him.  But you can never go back to being a child again, and the story itself is thin and more than a little racist.  Why not cast the "natives" as Amazons or something, anything, rather than try to tidy up the racism of the original story.

First, three hours!  There's very little that will hold your attention for three hours, and Peter Pan is not even in the running.  Second, every time something happened, they cut to a series of commercials, a lot of commercials, so whatever magic might have been there got lost in the anti-magic of Walmart.

When you're making a musical, it's important to cast people who can sing really well.  Not just good enough, not just adequately.  And for the most part, the actors cast in the major roles couldn't sing.  The exceptions, Kelli O'Hara (Mrs. Darling) and Taylor Louderman (Wendy) were notable, and we sat up and took notice.  Christopher Walken started out as camp, but seemed to lose interest, or get tired, half way through the performance.  Allison Williams wasn't bad, but certainly is not headed for greatness, and there must have been some nepotism at work in casting Brian Williams' daughter in the role.

If NBC does another Live performance, I'll probably just skip it.