THE PRINCESS REVOLT

An ordinary girl finds extraordinary adventure in this fractured fairy tale.

Cia, a 13-year-old White girl, isn’t enough for her mother, who persists in overwhelming her with empowering, feminist messaging that leaves Cia feeling inadequate despite her generally good life: decent grades, a great best friend (ridiculously wealthy Indian American Romy), a crush to obsess over, and an amazing little brother. Only Cia hasn’t slept at all for 11 days and somehow still feels fine, which leads her to the “baby sleep-whisperer” her mother once took her to, where she learns she’s under a spell. Technically it’s a counterspell to ensure she never falls for “all that princess nonsense” that is manifesting as experiences that are the (fairly literal) opposite of those of some big-name, Disney-fied princesses like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, the Little Mermaid, and Belle: In addition to not sleeping, Cia’s locker is spilling over with shoes, she’s going bald and transforming into a mermaid, and the boy she likes is becoming a beast. Despite the fun premise, this series opener fails to fully deliver; Cia’s adult-sounding first-person narration is hard to buy, the heavy-handed authorial messaging sucks the fun from the over-the-top situations, and the Brooklyn setting is so divorced from reality that it reads like the biggest fairy tale of them all.

Like the spell at its center: well intentioned but ineffective.