Master and Commander is every bit as good as the reviews claim. (OK, here's one guy who didn't like it.) I took my six year old son and nine year old daughter to it this afternoon while the rest of the family was off at boy scout camp. And although Christopher Hitchens may think that leaving out sodomy while keeping the rum and the lash makes the movie less worthwhile, I have to disagree.

It may not hold fast to the Patrick O'Brian novels, but it's still a great movie all around. The battle scenes convey all the confusion and mayhem that must have reigned in such smokey, tight quarters as a British frigate. Even the non-battle scenes are memorable - the sailors climbing and balancing in the rigging, the Galapagos Islands with all their strange flora and fauna, the tall ships sailing the sea, or standing in a duldrums (OK, it's easy to be memorable with something as beautiful as a full-masted ship.) And then, there are the interior scenes, from below decks, shot in the style of the old candle light painters. Visually, it's a beautiful movie.

And it's not so bad thematically, either. While the main character's commitment to duty may stand out as the chief theme for some, the real crux of the story is the importance of friendship. And not just the friendship between Aubry and Maturin, but the bonds of loyalty and friendship among all the men of the ship - from the able-bodied seamen to the officers. It's the intricate balance of friendship that holds them together under such hellish conditions. And indeed, the one character with no friends ends up a suicide.

I had some reservations about taking my kids to the movie. Even though it's rated PG-13, I was worried the battle scenes might be too much for them. They weren't. Those scenes were among their favorites. It was the surgical scenes that were the hardest to take - an amputation (not gorey, but angst-producing, since it was performed on the arm of an 11-year-old), a trepanning, and an abdominal surgery performed by the surgeon - on himself. And although the kids covered their eyes in those parts of the movie, they still pronounced it better than Pirates of the Caribbean. Not bad for a movie not directed at kids.