Critic Reviews

So it was a night where Williams and Walken, at disparate ends of the live performance, gave a lot to their roles and to the success of the night. It wasn't flawless (and if you factor in the moments when Walken seemed to be particularly awash in the lights, maybe you'll be crueler about the overall quality), but it was entertaining enough for three hours of live song and dance.

The overall production--good, mostly efficient, and certainly not perfect.

Technically and visually, Peter Pan Live! delivered. The smartest thing the production did was to be unashamedly stagey.

It wasn't perfect by any means--switching between live singing and all those filmed ads killed just about any theatrical energy and flow well before the three hours were up--but the production was colorful and glitch-free. Allison Williams of Girls made a much more committed Peter than Carrie Underwood did a Maria von Trapp in last year's endless Sound of Music Live!, and Christopher Walken's extremely peculiar Captain Hook was a triumph.

It was... fine. Totally fine. Just as I'd suspected. Nothing spectacular. But nothing so embarrassing as NBC’s live production of The Sound of Music.

It was a cautious, please-all production, but it took guts to do it.

Viewers who stuck with Peter Pan Live! for three hours were treated to a technically adequate, charmingly performed night of retro theater-on-television.

Peter Pan Live!, while better in many ways than last year's "Sound of Music Live!," was still uneven, partly because of casting and partly because of the dated source material.

Thursday's live musical on NBC didn't always soar, but it did generally manage to stay off the ground--or at least it did when it stuck closely to the original musical. But when it wandered into new, less-enchanted territory,the production threatened to become, well, earthbound. For those moments when Peter took flight, much of the credit goes to a game performance by Allison Williams as Peter

Though punishingly overlong and occasionally flat-footed, NBC's Thursday broadcast of Peter Pan Live! was another honorably ambitious and sporadically enjoyable attempt to bring the thrill of musical theater into America's living rooms.