Peter Pan Live! (2014)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Absolutely the worst movie.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I run an entertainment review blog with a friend of mine, and for some reason, we have an obsession with watching the live NBC musicals to see how bad they can actually get. We watched Sound of Music, which is bad, but it was so hilariously bad that I would recommend you watching it. However, I can not do that for this.It was better. Far better than the Sound of Music. But, that made it unfunny. It was a massive waste of time. I have parts of my wall that I haven't stared at, and I would have rather done that.The set was cheap and awful. It was like looking at a primary school play with a set that the children made themselves. Especially Neverland. THEY HAD TO WRITE NEVERLAND ON THE FLOOR SO THE VIEWERS KNEW WHERE THEY WERE! Also, some of the set and camera work was truly awful. You could literally see the cables that were tied to everyone to make the illusion of flight. Also, I swear I saw a part of the roof in one of the scenes, and the lighting when Peter/Allison Williams got her shadow was SO BAD. You could still see her reflection on the floor! I mean, even the previously mentioned primary school play's lighting is better than that. And the audio. I could hear more fuzz then dialogue! Like, seriously! I thought someone was just controlling Christopher Walken with strings. His enthusiasm seemed about as high as me watching the thing. (But when he forgot his line, I cried with laughter. That was hilarious.) It may seem like I'm just saying technical issues that doesn't really matter to the regular viewer, but it is bad. I love the original movie, and I'm sure the stage play is just as amazing, but this makes me cringe. It makes me feel so bad about what this years The Wiz Live! will be and I just don't understand how they can keep making these.

Get out the cranberry sauce - you will need it for this turkey!This stinkeroo should forever end any pretension that Alison Williams should be in the Entertainment Industry. The only reason she was castis because her Father, Brian Williams, is a powerful part of NBC news.NBC hyped the daylights out of this production, and it still crashed and burned.As bad as Alison Williams was in this production, she was by no means the worst performer - that distinction has to go to Christopher Walkin. Walkin confuses "pirate" with "really bad drag queen " as he prances his way through his scenes. His Captain Hook comes across more as an aging pedophile than a serious villain.This is a lovely family friendly story. I encourage you to watch any of the previous versions of this production which have been filmed over the past fifty years.

Watching it with an open mind and without comparison to the Cathy Rigby and Mary Martin versions(both superior), Peter Pan Live is not quite as awful as it has been said to be, there were a few things that were good. But on the whole, Peter Pan Live never really got its feet of the ground, starting off just okay at best and getting worse the later it got.There were a few good performances, the two best ones being from Kelli O'Hara and Christian Borle. O'Hara is an incredibly touching Mrs. Darling and with its gentle, angelic quality and warm but not excessive vibrato has the best singing voice of the entire cast, so much so anybody would love for her to sing them to sleep. Borle's Smee is a riot and he looks like he is having a whale of a time and brings the most energy out of anybody involved(he is good as Mr Darling too though it was odd when you are so used to the dual role being Mr Darling and Hook). Singing-wise, he is close behind O'Hara, rich and characterful. Taylor Loudermann is rather mature for Wendy but has a very pleasant, sweet toned voice and comes across as compassionate and charming. The crocodile also looks great, Nana is very well-trained(her mannerisms done to perfection and providing some humour) and the pirates bring bucketfuls of liveliness to their scenes if a little too over-eager in places(though in honesty they were likely trying to compensate for Walken).Allison Williams doesn't come off entirely successfully as Peter. She tries her best and actually is youthful, has a pretty voice that is up to the challenges of the role(and the role is not easy at all) and has alluring smile and eyes, however she does come across as too gamine and nowhere near cocksure enough(not even in the Duel number), certainly not passing at all as a 12-year old or so boy. She doesn't look completely at ease with the wires either. Christopher Walken is a disaster, I do like Walken but he was completely wrong for Hook. He completely phones it in, looks as though he wandered on stage drunk and squints a lot as if trying to read the prompter, his dancing is also lazy(whereas the rest of the pirates showed great athleticism he was basically shuffling from one leg to another and his singing is constantly tired-sounding and underpowered). Never do you feel any kind of menace and when there was any humour with him it came across as unintentional, like his out of time tambourine playing and radio frequency-sounding last note in Tarantella. The Lost Boys would pass more for football hooligans and the Indians even when looking more like Hawaiians still look and act stereotypically. John and Michael are okay though their energy flounders later on, John baring a resemblance to Harry Potter is a tiny bit disconcerting, while Alanna Saunders is an alluring and athletic if too sexy Tiger Lily.Visually, the production didn't really appeal to me. There's a lot of detail evident in the sets, but the colours often do look too bright and gaudy, while the costumes are mixed, Peter's and Hook's are nice and traditional and Mrs Darling's is gorgeous, but Wendy's is rather low-cut, the Lost Boys' look way too small for them and the Indians' look like ones that would belong somewhere else other than Peter Pan. The camera work is shaky and over-reliant on panning and close-ups which completely betrays Williams' lack of boyish youthfulness and the wires are always too visible which takes away from the magic. The music and songs are wonderful and the orchestra do perform them well but they really needed much more energy and ensemble tightness than they had here, the early songs are not so bad but halfway through and onwards the pace slackens to the extent the production's almost lifeless.Staging-wise and pace-wise other than Walken this was where the production fell down most upon, though some may forgive how clumsy the wire work looked. The choreography is very lacking, especially with the pirates, sometimes out-of-sync and too simple, Tarantella was a train-wreck but at least had that clever touch with the trap door. The Indian dancing looked more like gyrating, which looked so misplaced. What was also lacking was chemistry between the performers, again the opening nursery scene was very well done, but Duel was let down hugely by a lack of tension and lack of chemistry between Peter and Hook(Peter and Wendy's chemistry wasn't completely believable either but that between him and Hook was the bigger let down). The climatic sword fight fares just as bad, children doing pretend sword-fighting in the school playground is less amateurish than what was choreographed here. The pacing sags badly halfway through and never recovers beyond that point, the story is a classic but with a lot of musical numbers and thin on story there was a very bloated and overlong feel with nowhere near enough magic.All in all, has its moments and not as entirely awful as all that but even when judged fairly and on its own in my opinion Peter Pan Live didn't pass with flying colours. 3/10 Bethany Cox

I loved the songs like "Is it Just for Pretend" , "Never Grow Up" and the insult song Pan and Hook sing to one another. It was a well acted, well sung production. Allison Williams was great. I have never heard of her before this and she was a great Peter Pan with her androgynous look in the makeup and costume. She has a very nice singing voice. Christopher Walken was hilarious, perfect choice for Hook. The dance numbers with the Lost Boys and the Pirates and Hook were fun to watch. I did not notice big gaffs in this live show. It did seem that Peter Pan flew a little slow but this was so minor. I recorded it and have been re watching it.