Video/DVD Review: The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Taking Over the Tipton
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know Zack and Cody can be pretty rowdy and scheming at times, although they generally come clean and try to redeem themselves in the end.
- Families can talk about the rivalry between Zack and Cody. How is this shown in these episodes? How do they resolve it? Should the adults in this show be more responsible? Do these kids have too much freedom because they live in a hotel?
THE SUITE LIFE OF ZACK & CODY: TAKING OVER THE TIPTON features five episodes from the Disney Channel TV series about twin brothers Zack and Cody (Dylan and Cole Sprouse), who live in Boston's Tipton Hotel with their single mom, who works as a singer there. Having a hotel for a home makes for all kinds of misadventures and mischief for the rambunctious 12-year-old brothers and their friends, Maddie (who works in the gift shop), and London, the hotel owner's spoiled daughter. The kids struggle with school work, disguise themselves as waiters to watch a handsome pop star's rehearsal, and come up with creative schemes. In a production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the tweens spend more time embroiled in various infatuations and jealousies than rehearsing, although they do smartly realize that this actually mirrors the play itself. Other episodes explore the "Odd Couple" differences between Zack and Cody and London's efforts to date a cute National Merit scholar by pretending to be more intellectual than she is in a Cyrano de Bergerac-like plot.
An exaggerated, cartoonish sort of entertainment, The Suite Life takes the phrase "boys will be boys" and runs with it, occasionally falling flat on its face.
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