“Is there anything worse than an actor with a cause?” asks an annoyed Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan’s first wife, early in “Reagan,” the new biopic starring Dennis Quaid.

Well, after watching two more hours of this story, an adoring look back at the man who served two terms as our 40th president, we can report that there is definitely one thing worse: an actor without a movie.

Let’s not blame the star, though. Quaid, who has played more than one president, has certainly got the charismatic grin, the pomaded hair and especially that distinctive, folksy voice down.

But “Reagan” demands a lot more depth. To co-opt a political phrase from Bill Clinton, whom Quaid also has played: It’s the script, stupid.

Directed by Sean McNamara with a screenplay by Howard Klausner, “Reagan” begins with a chilling event (and a parallel to a recent one): the assassination attempt on Reagan in Washington in March 1981, only two months after he became president.

There are those who say Reagan cemented his relationship with the public by surviving that attempt; he famously told wife Nancy from his bed: “Honey, I forgot to duck.” In any case, the filmmakers use the event to set up their story, and will return to it later on, chronologically.

Reagan came away from the scare with a divine plan. “My mother used to say that everything in life happens for a reason, even the most disheartening setbacks,” he says. And as he will tell Tip O’Neill, the House speaker, everything from then on will be part of that plan.

The broader point here is that Reagan, according to this film, was solely responsible for the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union because he showed the people of the world what freedom meant. “I knew that he was the one,” says Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight), the retired KGB spy serving as a narrator — meaning the one who would bring it all down. The script is based on Paul Kengor’s “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,” and Kengor has said Viktor is based on a number of KGB agents and analysts who tracked Reagan for years.

That point is made early and often. The rest is a history reel, with glorious, loving lighting around our star. We go back to his younger years, learning about his mother and what she taught him about faith, and then his Hollywood years as an actor (and a Democrat) before fully committing to politics, and the GOP.

We also see a newly divorced Reagan meet a winsome Nancy Davis, who will become his second wife and constant companion. Like Quaid, Penelope Ann Miller is a perfectly fine actor who has little nuance to work with here. Together, they embark on the path to political stardom, starting with the California governorship.

But a decade later, Reagan is sworn in as president, beginning his eight years in office. “It became my obsession to understand what was beneath the facade,” says Voight’s Petrovich, explaining why Reagan was so consequential.

When this movie ends, with the president’s death in 2004 a decade after announcing he had Alzheimer’s disease, we don’t know a lot more than when we began about a figure so influential in U.S. politics.

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violent content and smoking)

Running time: 2:15

How to watch: In theaters