There have been other documentaries about “America’s Band,” The Beach Boys. There have been books aplenty, especially about the mercurial, unstable musical genius of the group, Brian Wilson.

And there was “Love & Mercy” that got deep into Brian’s later life struggles with mental illness and his controlling, perhaps predatory therapist Eugene Landy.

But here’s what the new documentary “The Beach Boys,” aka “The Disney Version” of their history gets at that I — at least — found fresh and different.

There’s a lot about their pre-history, not just earlier names of the band, but little known earlier members of the band itself. This is rarely highlighted, but with surviving member Al Jardine around to have his say, a lot of that history is plumbed. Jardine’s pre-Beach Boys story is more musically interesting than you’d expect, and more pivotal to their formation and folk harmony sound than one might have gathered.

Late brothers Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson are seen and heard in archival interviews that reveals more about the sibling relationships and each brother’s musical strengths. Drummer Dennis took up the drums just to make them a performing, touring vocal group/band. Carl’s top flight musicianship is praised. Dennis, famously “the only surfer” in the band, got in and got heard in that sibling dynamic “because I could beat Carl up.”

We see them rise from Hawthorne, California to fame, their enshrinement as “the most articulate spokespeople for ‘The California Dream,'” and their abrupt turn towards musical irrelevance and its reasons.

And Mike Love, the lead singer who developed a reputation as one of the biggest jerks in pop music and explains some of his abrasiveness and pushiness, the lawsuit he filed when the Wilson brothers’ dad Murry sold the rights to their songs (Love did a LOT of the lyrics on their earliest hits). It’s a little shocking seeing Love mellow into someone this reflective and human, getting his due from Brian and others as one of the great lead singing “frontmen” of his era.

The rest of the film is notable for what it skims through — their creative process, the birth of their “different keys on a keyboard” harmonies, the creation of their most famous records, their “rivalry” with The Beatles — and for what it leaves out.

There’s little about Brian’s struggles, no mention of the Landy years, and a seriously short-changed treatment of their “playing their hits” oldies act half-century. The death of Dennis and Carl is not even mentioned.

The film that emerges feels sanitized, much like the band’s overall reputation over the decades, Nancy Reagan-approved California kids who harmonized like angels.

“The Beach Boys” thus makes for a family-friendly biographical overview, endorsed by Janelle Monae, musician-producer Don Was, Lindsay Buckingham and other peers, all of whom back up what made them special and earned them the title “America’s Band,” even though “California’s Band” would have been more apt.

Rating: PG-13, profanity, discussions of drug abuse

Cast: Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford, Bruce Johnston, Paul McCartney, Janelle Monae, Lindsey Buckingham, Don Was

Credits: Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny, scripted by Mark Monroe. A Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:53