Metacritic reviews

An extremely clever concept that takes the "spares" in the royal equation and turns them into a superhero group. While hardly a blockbuster, this Disney+ movie occupies the upper tier of the kind of movies that have proved quite popular for Disney Channel.

The movie is full of the best bits of the kid-adventure genre — exciting and weird powers! Cool training montages! Intriguing plot! — but when it brings in heavier emotional stakes, the elements don’t quite gel.

Secret Society of Second-Born Royals is pure family-friendly fun, combining princesses and superheroes for a delightful, if unoriginal, adventure.

Nothing about this inert, dull project feels like a movie. It’s a half-idea, half-heartedly filmed. Yes, it’s a kids’ movie, but kids are smarter in 2020 about their action entertainment and putting this alongside all the Marvel movies on Disney Plus feels almost mean.

The most polished superpower on display in the defiantly unexciting Secret Society of Second-Born Royals is the ability to say its title without spitting.

It’s hard to tell if it’s deliberately targeting a certain demographic or just too sloppy and unsophisticated to work on anyone who’s learned to tell the difference in quality between “Cars” and “Planes.”

Thanks to Marvel, many films are trying to cash in on cape-and-spandex mania right now, but unlike the MCU, they look like crapola. If you’re going to make a superhero movie today, you gotta have a budget. “Secret Society,” perhaps, had Microsoft Paint.