Movie Review: 'The Secret Society of Second Born Royals'

Disney's latest original, The Secret Society of Second Born Royals made me nostalgic for the days of the Famous Jett Jackson or Cadet Kelly. At least those movies were made with an awareness that they were low budget filler intended only for the undiscerning minds of grade schoolers. The makers of The Secret Society of Second Born Royals have made something that pretends towards Harry Potter with super heroes and ends up an abyss of mediocre predictability.

The Secret Society of Second Born Royals stars Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Sam. Sam is second in line to throne of Illyria, a small European country where everyone speaks perfect English or some have English accents and it's all obviously New York City. Sam's sister, Eleanor (Ashley Liao), is about to ascend to throne and while Sam isn't exactly jealous of her big sister, she's not exactly supportive either. When we meet Sam she's performing with her best friend in a band and their song is calling for an end to the monarchy.

When Sam finds more trouble at school she ends up sentenced to taking summer school classes. However, these classes are not what they appear. The professor is Dr James Morrow (Skyler Astin) informs Sam and her fellow students on their first day that they won't be doing any math or reading. This isn't even a real summer school. You see, everyone in the class is a second born royal and all second born royals, are born with super powers.

Joining Sam in this bizarre world crossing X-Men with Hogwarts are four fellow students, January (Isabella Blake Thomas), the hyper friendly one, Matteo (Faly Rakotohavana), the quiet one, Tuma (Niles Finch) the loud one, and Sam's nemesis, Roxana (Olivia Deeble), the self-involved Instagram Influencer.

Each of the kids have a superpower though they don't know what that power is yet. The rest of the story will be about discovering their power and then mastering how to use it. Then, of course, their will be a crisis, in this case an escaped, super-powered, villain known mysteriously only as Inmate 23 (Greg Bryk), and the team will have to learn a valuable lesson about teamwork or some such thing.

The Secret Life of Second Born Royals is aimed at a very young audience so calling out the movie for being simpleminded is rather pointless. That said, the movie is almost insultingly dimwitted at times. Plot points are delivered with the subtlety of a brick to the head and what little humor there is of a groaning variety.

Most egregious however is how incredibly boring and low rent The Secret Lives of Second Born Royals is. None of these young characters stand out, each are a variation of the most basic clichés of coming of age characters. The popular girl fears not being seen and her superpower is invisibility, the suspicious girl has the power to take the powers of those around her, a full rip off of an X-Men character, and our main character has a talent so vague it takes a lot of bad special effects to make her powers relevant.

Speaking of bad special effects, wow! The closing act of The Secret Lives of Second Born Royals features effects that only fans of Sharknado might appreciate. We, quite reasonably, expect a lot from a Disney production when it comes to special effects and it is that much more unfortunate and disappointing when a company with the resources of Disney releases a movie with such shoddy effects.

The Secret Society of Second Born Royals debuts on Disney Plus on September 25th.