The U.S. vs. John Lennon has access to a staggering array of people, ranging from a florid Gore Vidal to a totally unrepentant G. Gordon Liddy. Seemingly everyone who had an impact on America in the 70’s is here; writers, artists, musicians, politicians, journalists, FBI agents, and activists from both sides of the political aisle. So why does the whole exercise feel so superficial?

The U.S. vs. John Lennon is a “rock doc,” as those hipsters at VH1 call it, and it has all the depth one might expect out of a typical episode of Behind the Music. The glamor is there, the glitz, the hint of the optimistically progressive spirit of the counter-culture 70’s. But there’s no fire under all the smoke. The U.S. vs. John Lennon is content merely to catalogue a basic surface history.

That history: As the 60’s waned, John Lennon shed his cute mop-top image for something a little more true to his beliefs. The doc contends this transformation began in earnest with Lennon’s infamous “bigger than Jesus” quote, a controversy fueled by Lennon’s offhand comment that to the average schoolchild in England, the Beatles were bigger, more important, than Jesus. (The fact that he was most likely absolutely right never got much airtime.) Radio stations, churches, and even entire cities banned Beatles airplay, some even going so far as to hold mass burnings of Beatles albums. Comparisons to the ostracism of the Dixie Chicks are not made, but are obvious to anyone schooled in the history of pop music.

The 70’s brought more change, furthering America’s discomfort with its adopted son. Lennon grew his hair out. He protested the war in Vietnam. He protested all war everywhere. He associated with known left-wing activists and militants, up to and including that great conservative boogeyman of the 60’s and 70’s, the Black Panthers. Decades before Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt took millions from the celebrity press to help starving kids, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were using the press’s obligation to follow their every move to draw attention to people and places in the world they felt needed it.

The government, in the form of Richard Nixon’s presidency and the FBI, took notice of the subversive immigrant. Who was John Lennon, asks Libby in all apparent seriousness, to question the policies of a country that had been so good to him? (The obvious answer being “because he was concerned about the rights of others,” a mindset demonstrably foreign to Libby.) The FBI initiated an illegal wiretap program to track Lennon and other dissidents, and a process begun to have Lennon’s visa cancelled and the man himself kicked out of the country.

Illegal wiretapping, campaigns of harassment, specious charges against uppity immigrants… this all sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it? But nevermind.

Lennon eventually won his right to stay in the States, and deftly made fools out of his governmental opponents in the process.What does come across is what a self-effacing wit John Lennon truly was. It’s easy to take his and Yoko Ono’s stunts as the naieveté and indulgence of too-rich-for-their-own-good artists. But that very same exposure to ridicule is what made his actions daring, even brave; a clip from a particularly hostile interview with a reviewer from the New York Times demonstrates just how much of his cachet Lennon was willing to sacrifice to be heard. And in emulating Mahatma Gandhi, he was peaceful but persistent; he was never mean, nor hostile, nor underhanded in his dealings. The same cannot be said for his opponents.

It’s an entertaining story, and one that should be told. To do so superficially is a disservice, however; to fail to make the material relevant to contemporary life borders on negligence. No, not every documentary must be a harsh critique of Our Modern Times. But a documentary does a disservice when it can’t even muster the same courage and conviction that it so reveres in its subject.