Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Adam is a 13 year old boy who has just discovered his sexuality. He is not so popular at school and takes a few beatings, but he at least has a prospective girlfriend; that is, until one night while perusing a Playboy magazine in his room he sees the real thing from his window, a beautiful woman semi-naked, right across the street. From that point, Adam is obsessed with this woman, Catherine. Most women would have sent him on his way for his own good, but Catherine is confused and conflicted, and she is a painter, a bohemian artist who is just ending an affair with JFK, and her ex-husband works for the CIA. She is flattered by his interest and boldness, and soon begins to really care about him. The JFK/CIA angle in this film is the weakest part of this movie; it just seems too far fetched. This film would have been just fine without that subplot. The interaction between an older woman who is trying to find herself, and the infatuation of a young boy with her made for some real interest. The ending of this movie is very touching.

This film tries to combine a coming-of-age story with the shadowy intrigue of the end of the Kennedy Administration. The result is a soporific and laughably dated saga that feels more like the childhood history of a serial killer.Adam Stafford (Cameron Bright) is a 13 year old boy living in Washington D.C. in 1963. One night while his parents (Noah Wyle and Perry Reeves) are out, Adam sees the woman across the street through her window. He catches a flash of boob from her open robe and, as sure as the Sun rises, he's at her place the next day offering to do chores. Her name is Catherine Caswell (Gretchen Mol) and she is one of JFK's paramours, something which is well known by Adam's parents and the rest of D.C. society. That's the setup.The rest of the movie is an erratic and uneven mix of Catherine as a woman of the world opening Adam's eyes to life and Catherine as the cornerstone of efforts by the CIA to get President Kennedy to continue to go after Fidel Castro in the wake of the Bay of Pigs. There's also Adam swapping spit with a girl from his Catholic school, a well-acted but terribly clichéd CIA mastermind, another CIA guy who turns out to be Catherine's ex-husband and too many unnecessary and unexplained references to Catherine's dead son.Gretchen Mol does some nice work, giving Catherine just the right balance of zest for life and world weariness. James Rebhorn is also realistically sinister as the CIA baddie, though the role is written with just a little more subtlety than Darth Vader. That and a couple of looks at Mol's breasts are about the only good things in An American Affair.As for the bad, well…it's kind of unfair to do it, but the list has to begin with the inanimate acting of Cameron Bright. He's a young actor and you can't know what sort of instruction he received from director William Sten Olssen, but Bright is just horrendous. He wanders through 95% of the film with the same blank look on his face and the only time Adam displays any personality at all, it's an appallingly self-centered and slightly creepy one. Unless Olssen said to Bright "I want you to play Adam Stafford like he was an autistic sociopath", this is a truly terrible performance. If there'd been a scene in the movie where Adam vivisected the neighborhood cats, it wouldn't have been at all out of place.An American Affair also intimates that it was the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans who were behind the Kennedy assassination, which might have been somewhat provocative or thought provoking in 1989. In 2009, however, such paranoid theorizing barely qualifies as quaint. When the Kennedy stuff completely takes over the last 20 minutes of the story, it's the same thing as listening to a book report from a not terribly bright 4th grader; a shallow and uninspired recitation of something you already know.In addition, An American Affair features a soundtrack that would be a great cure for insomnia, which fits in with the comprehensively listless and joyless tone and style of the entire production. Director Olssen and writer Alex Metcalf take a young boy's sexual and emotional awakening, the assassination of a U.S. President, secret conspiracies and a woman who loses everything she's ever had or wanted and turn it into a flavorless cinematic oatmeal. I've seen Geico commercials that touched me more deeply than this movie. I've sat through pledge breaks on Iowa Public Television that were more dynamic and watching my clothes spin in a laundromat washing machine did more to hold my interest.This film fails to recreate a sense of the 1960s or to revive memories of your own adolescent struggles. It has no humor, no drama and no wit. Even if Gretchen Mol were stark naked through the entire movie, a man could be stranded alone for 15 years on a desert island and still not enjoy watching An American Affair.

OMG! The CIA whacked Jack! Come back to reality. The movie has great actors (Noah Wyle, James Rebhorn, Gretchen Mol, among others); however, the Libtards in Hollywood simply cannot tell a story without their crazed anti-American, Anti-CIA, anti-whatever being the core of the story.JFK was murdered by Oswald (with perhaps the aid of Sam Giancana). Bobby Kennedy was a ruthless and LAWLESS man. JFK had many flaws but was a great leader surrounded by lousy advisers! The movie is still worth watching as every 14 year old boy's fantasy comes to life and love is not what it is all cracked up to be! Had Jack lived he most likely would NOT have been re-elected as Goldwater was way ahead in the polls and the American public was still quite angry at the poor handling of Cuba and Kruschev!

In 1963 I was a senior in high school. Later in 1963 I was a freshman in college. It was there, on my way to or from the cafeteria that I learned our President was shot.This movie, set in that time, brings back good memories for me, not that things were necessarily great in 1963, but because none of us will ever see 1963 again, time passes so quickly.In this fictitious account Gretchen Mol is Catherine Caswell, 30-something and divorced from her CIA husband. Catherine knows John Kennedy, she really "knows" him, and at times he comes to visit her during the night.Cameron Bright, about 15 during filming, is teen Adam Stafford, going through the raging hormone stage. Adam's bedroom window happens to be right across from Catherine's windows, and at night he often catches a glimpse of her. One night after quite a nice, partially nude glimpse, he takes to being very nosy. As in intercepting her mail, steaming it open, to find out more about this mysterious woman who seems to delight in that she can turn on a teenager.All this leads to Adam getting a job taking care of Catherine's yard, with a fringe benefit of becoming her friend. Overall the movie is more about Adam's coming of age (although he never gets close to sleeping with Catherine) than of Catherine's alleged affair with the President. In addition there is a subplot to get and destroy her diary which certainly would have sensitive matter in it.Good movie, better than the IMDb rating would indicate, in my judgement. Mol is an under-appreciated actress, beautiful and always delivers a memorable performance.