Ever since the news broke that Grammy winner Carrie Underwood would star in The Sound of Music Live!, we knew both success and controversy would come with her. And sure enough, as the awkwardly placed premiere occurred (on a Thursday night during Christmas time? Really!?) NBC had a hit…sort of. While 18 million viewers tuned in to see the musical, most came to see whether the endless rants on Twitter were correct. Who would have thought that casting a country music star with no acting experience in an iconic role played by the even more iconic Julie Andrews would cause disagreement! But okay, we get it may not be the best casting but sending death threats is a little too far don’t you think? My personal expectations for the singer as Maria Von Trapp weren’t high but I came in with the hope that she could at least prove the judgmental idiots with too much time on their hands wrong! And the moment I saw her make her debut I realized she won’t be the biggest problem. The truth is Underwood perfected each song (despite the fact that the order made no sense whatsoever), it’s just that when the music stopped, she performed High School level acting at best. But what can you expect from her? The REAL problem is with the people you should expect good acting from! Stephen Moyer as Captain Von Trapp surprised me when he neither had singing nor acting talent! It was just one stiff scene that lacked chemistry after the next! The only believable acting came from either the children in the cast (even though not one of them was a blonde like the original movie) or adults that came from Broadway. But even the people that could act and sing were terribly miscast! Audra McDonald, despite being a crazy good singer (like CRAZY good singer) didn’t fit the older character of Mother Abbess. And don’t even get me started on Michael Campayno as Rolf! Do you really expect us to believe he’s only 17!!!?? But perhaps the biggest culprit to the failure of this musical were the costumes/sets/ANYTHING else that was visual. I get that it was trying to look like it was a theater set but do the outdoor scenes really need to look that fake? And even worse were the costumes that busy dresses looked out right ugly and wigs (like Carrie Underwood’s) downright laughable. It made the show incredibly difficult to be taken seriously. I guess what I wanted was a TV movie that wan’t like a TV movie which, if that makes any sense at all, is unlikely. The best correction I can give is to get a Director who treats it like a movie made for the Big Screen not the small. Hiring Smash creator Rob Ashford made The Sound of Music! the new definition of “hate watching.” He tried to depart of from the expectations brought with the original movie but couldn’t completely break away. With something like this you need a new take on the classic or else the original will swallow you hole and the fact is the Broadway production isn’t different enough from the movie to be a new take. But regardless, because of the massive viewership, other big budget TV movies are sure to be headed to cable networks. The Sound of Music! was a good first try NBC, let’s just hope that future movie musicals (of which there are many this oncoming year) and future TV movies learn from the good and bad of The Sound of Music Live!