Underwood's singing and acting?
She's typical Underwood here...and frankly I find her a very dull singer, she either sounds too polished, too sterile or too much like she's trying desperately to be neither...I don't even think she's a good replacement for Faith Hill for the Sunday Night Football theme...so her replacing JULIE ANDREWS? It's like Ethan Hawke as Hamlet instead of Olivier or Branagh--namely, dull from a musical standpoint, not at all as rich vocally as Andrews, and from an acting standpoint, that may well have been one of the worst major network performances in a leading role I've EVER seen...EVER.

One other thing--why remake "The Sound of Music" at all?

I mean, a remake is so rarely even worthy of the original, let alone as good or even better...about the only thing that I can think of that I'd EVER want to see remade are adaptations of Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen and so on...

But even THEN it's so often just a polished disaster, or just not up to snuff with a previous version.

Consider we had to wait almost 50 years, until 1996, before we had a Western screen Hamlet that was even REMOTELY worth talking about as being comparable or better than Olivier in his defining, Oscar-winning 1948 adaptation...

The 1970s BBC version with Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart is good, but not as legendary, and unless you're a Shakespeare person or were of the age where Jacobi's TV Hamlet was "your Hamlet" the way your first Bond or first Doctor is "yours," really, chances are you haven't seen this version and it didn't leave nearly the impression on the larger artistic, theatrical and cinematic world that Olivier's did.

Mel Gibson took a swipe at it in the early 1990s, and...sucked. Hard. And this was a version set in a period-appropriate caste with Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia and Glenn Close as Gertrude as well as the legendary Franco Zeffirelli directing...Gibson's Hamlet is largely remembered as a joke today (though the film as a whole without him is well made and acted, it really is Gibson that's the weak link...it's just a shame he's the star...or was ever involved in any Shakespeare work ever.)

And for Branagh to even BEGIN to measure up to Olivier's legacy he had to act and direct and shoot at a real palace (Blenheim) with a cast of Julie Christie, Derek Jacobi, Kate Winslet, Brian Blessed, Charlton Heston, Judi Dench, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams (neither of whom make a mockery of things, as you might think) and other stars, all while shooting the most expansive version of the play, an UNCUT version of the entire text of the play, and to cap it all off, it has a Placido Domingo aria at the end.

Suffice it to say...NBC did NOT put that kind of effort or starpower into this. At all.

It's a classic...why remake it if you can't remake it better?

Hell, I didn't think the Tim Burton Willy Wonka was better, but it was at least tonally and thematically different from the Gene Wilder version...closer to the book in some ways and yet oddly it "feels" less like the Willy Wonka we know and love, and it bombed, but at least it tried to remake a classic film in a new way.

The new Star Trek films are hit-and-miss here--they've cast the roles well enough, and since a lot of fun in Trek just comes from the characters, that's been a huge plus and probably a saving grace given that both movies, while fun, are action-heavy and have definite flaws and holes...and in some ways don't feel too original at that...but at least if they were action retreads they were FUN (for the 87% or so who liked the films according to Rotten Tomatoes, including me) if definitely, definitely flawed.

That wasn't even done tongue-in-cheek or flashier or with a really knockout vocal performance--adequate at best and I'd argue not even that, not for this role--and even for a "live" version...it was just lacking in any kind of pacing or energy.

So...yeah. So long, farewell...