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PLOT: Film follows, via footage and reminiscences, John Lennon's activities in the Vietnam-era peace movement and the subsequent attempts by the Nixon White House to have him deported.
It goes without saying that a documentary about John Lennon that receives Yoko Ono's approval is going to be short of critical content if not an outright hagiography.
Case in point: The U.S. vs. John Lennon, a doc whose title refers to the Nixon White House's squinty-eyed assessment of the ex-Beatle as a key figure in the peace movement, and its attempts to create a kangaroo court to deport him.
That's all on the public record, and nothing new for anyone with any familiarity with the "thinking Beatle's" life.
But before getting around to that story, the makers of The U.S. vs. John Lennon seem to feel they must spend half the movie proving that John actually was a major peace player. One doesn't necessarily follow the other, of course. That administration was so paranoid and fearful, virtually all you had to do if you were a celebrity to end up on Nixon's "enemies list" was criticize the war on the Dick Cavett show.
The key points the movie hammers to establish Lennon's activist cred are scenes from a concert to free "White Panther" leader John Sinclair, who'd been jailed on a trumped up marijuana charge (ironically, Lennon's eventual deportation hearing hinged on a pot charge as well), another concert he played for families of victims of the Attica prison uprising, the "bed-in-for-peace" circus and his authorship of the song that became the movement's anthem, Give Peace A Chance.
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That may have been enough for Dick Nixon, but even the filmmakers have to concede that Lennon began to distance himself from the peace movement proper, and his refusal to participate in a planned "road show" of protests leading up to the 1972 Republican Convention probably scuttled that project. The film posits that he was bridling against Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin's attempts to "manipulate" him. The uncharitable view could be that beyond some Merry Pranksterism, Lennon was a bit of a dilettante, reluctant to get his hands dirty, let alone get teargassed or beaten.
In any case, there's no question the White House was out to get him, as the testimony of nutcase/pundit G. Gordon Liddy and fellow Watergate figures make clear.
However successful it is in making its point, The U.S. vs. John Lennon works best as doughy comfort food for Boomers, with input and music from practically everybody whose name was ever associated with the Vietnam era -- including both Woodward & Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, Angela Davis, Tommy Smothers, Bobby Seale, Gore Vidal, the aforementioned Dick Cavett, Ron Kovic (the Born On The Fourth Of July guy) and even a young Geraldo Rivera.
BOTTOM LINE: Yes, the Nixon White House saw John Lennon as a key figure in the peace movement and tried to deport him. But was he really? This Yoko-approved hagiography strains to make a case for John's peace cred before getting around to Lennon's "enemies list" experience. With input and music from practically everybody whose name was ever associated with the '60s.
(This film is rated PG)