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.

Written by Alex Metcalf and directed by William Olsson, "An American Affair" at least earns points for originality. For what starts out as a fairly conventional coming-of-age tale set in 1963 Washington D.C. suddenly turns into a piece of historical fiction when the obligatory older woman 13-year-old Adam Stafford (Cameron Bright) falls madly in love with turns out to be none other than the mistress of President John F. Kennedy himself. Thus, not only is Adam introduced to the wonderful world of raging hormones but to the sociopolitical issues of the day as well.Adam is the son of two journalists who have no clue their child has been peeping into the home across the way, enjoying a full-court view of Catherine Caswell (nicely played by Gretchen Mol), a glamorous divorcée and ex-CIA agent guaranteed to get any healthy young American lad's juices flowing. When Adam introduces himself to her, Catherine hires him on as a gardener, a setup that gives the youngster plenty of opportunity to not only make his move on this prospective conquest but, thanks to her uniquely complicated social life, to have a special behind-the-scenes glimpse into a bit of juicy, albeit undocumented, political history."An American Affair" throws so many disparate elements into the mix - May/December romance (or maybe more like February/August), lurid political melodrama, adolescent wish-fulfillment, cloak-and-dagger espionage, conspiracy-theory speculation - that it can't help but generate a certain fascination, even when the story itself is not all that convincing or the passion for the subject not everything it could be (this applies mainly to the first half).All the "Summer of '42" stuff is, ultimately, far less compelling than the political details of the period, steeped as they are in Kennedy-era glamour and paranoia, with larger-than-life figures acting out a torrid little soap opera in the foreground, while shadowy figures (mainly Cubans and CIA agents) skulk around in the background. The scenes surrounding the assassination are treated with subtlety and restraint, making them all the more heartbreaking and poignant for those in the audience who lived through the experience. In fact, the whole last half hour of the film achieves a haunting sadness that finally penetrates to the very marrow of one's bones.The movie certainly won't solve the puzzle as to "Who killed JFK?," but it has some fun trying to piece it all together.

Some of the reviewers here obviously have never heard of, or read a book of, historical fiction. This movie did not begin with "True Story". Hence why expect it to be? Indeed, if a film about historical events was 100% accurate it would be so boring we'd then complain about that. Gretchen Mol did a superb job as usual. I first saw her in "Forever Mine". If she gets the right part she always delivers. The part of the young man was also well done. It is difficult to give much info without spoiling the plot. It has drama, romance and tragedy. All well done; the components of good movies. So watch it for yourself. And don't try to make historical comparisons as you do. That's not what this movie is about.Most of the bad reviews here come from those who did not see the typical Hollywood template film they expected. There are no Quentin Tarantino type influences here. It's not the typical American type template that has won the US only 5 Palm D Ors in drama at Cannes in the last 25 years even though we've put out tens of thousands of films! Yes if you expect the usual steamy sex, filthy talk, things blowing up, chase scenes, gun battles and bloody gore-filled murder scenes you will be disappointed. Sadly, there are few American made movies worth the time or expense at a cinema these days but this is one of them. You get to have your cake and eat it too.

Apart from how boring this was, it was also historically inaccurate (apart from Kennedy's assassination), but even still, setting this during that time frame is somewhat distracting.The main plot is generic, recycled and unrealistic to say the least. What are the chances of this kid actually coming across all the events that happen in this story? Not bloody likely.Still, though, there were a couple good scenes (the ending was surprisingly good), but just not enough to save a mediocre film. Mediocre, but watchable at least. I'd be more willing to give this a three and a half, but unfortunately I have to pick either three or four here on IMDb...so I'm leaning more towards a three.