Before Ken Marino was busy dipping his balls in stuff on MTV’s sketch comedy show “The State,” chances are he was getting verbally abused by his father deep on Long Island. The experience touched him so deeply that he has created “Diggers,” a loving tribute to the 1970s clamming communities of the island.

Set in 1976, the film follows four friends as they struggle to compete with a corporate clamming company, adjust to the death of a loved one, and cope with the looming specter of the Carter administration. As in such life-crisis classics as “Diner” and “The Last Picture Show,” the heroes of “Diggers” struggle with the verge of adulthood in a lovingly drawn portrait of small town life.

The unnamed Long Island town here is a quaint place where the neighbors greet one another with a friendly middle finger and curse out their children while crushing beer cans in the car — but in a loving way.

With director Katherine Dieckman at the helm, Mr. Marino has composed a sweet-faced tribute to his childhood, down to the dirty undershirts, overcooked eggs, and charmingly sparse 1970s aesthetic of the clamming town he has painted.

Gathered are a crew of recognizable faces from such projects as “The State,” “Stella,” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Mr. Marino has cast himself as Frankie Lozo, the father of a growing family who employs a seemingly endless string of expletives to express himself. Ron Eldard is Jack, the local playboy who appears to have sexual healing powers. And Josh Hamilton is the loveable, drug-dealing Cons, who delivers an inspired acid-fueled soliloquy that almost qualifies him as a modern-day Lorax — until Frankie abruptly puts an end to his public service career.

But Paul Rudd is the focus as Hunt, an unsettled young man with a penchant for photography and a growing disinterest in clamming. When he recounts how his father used to reprimand him, saying, “You can’t catch clams with a camera,” Cons helpfully intones, “No wonder you haven’t had any luck. We’ve all been using rakes.”

And rake they do. “Diggers” delves into the clamming profession and the tangible toll it takes on its protagonists. They wake at dawn to get out on the water, attempt the futile task of gathering mollusks in overfished waters, and employ some oddly hump-like movements to gather clams with their rakes. Sometimes the men have trouble expressing themselves, but they always mean well.

As Hunt distances himself physically from clamming, his friends will soon be forced out of the business. The clamming conglomerate South Shore is slowly edging all of the private clammers out of the water and the march of time will forever change the way of life in this small town. It is an inevitable outcome, but still worth reminiscing about. Even if it means watching some clam humping to get there.

To add a female element to this boy drama, Maura Tierney puts in a capable turn as Hunt’s tough but sexy sister; Sarah Paulson is Frankie’s beleaguered and highly reproductive wife; and Lauren Ambrose gets quite a bit of traction out of the mostly thankless role of Zoe. As Hunt’s love interest, Zoe is a Manhattan transplant who has never eaten clams — essentially a bridge to explain the town’s strange customs to he audience.

It’s not much of a surprise to learn that the gruff characters on screen are actually covering up soft spots, but “Diggers” has such affection for its story that it’s easy to get caught up in the rising tide. Though the film and actors start out a bit too broad, “Diggers” soon finds its footing and delivers on the promise of heartfelt drama.

In the first moments, Mr. Rudd and Ms. Tierney harbor unwieldy accents that fortunately give way to more plausible characters in subsequent scenes. Mr. Marino gets a similar treatment — gruff and unruly, he sports a formidable handlebar mustache, screams at his children, disparages his wife, and pounds beers on the way to a funeral home. But of course, he eventually emerges as a worthwhile man struggling to make ends meet.

Mr. Marino knows his subject matter well and is eager to share this lifestyle on the brink of extinction. He has successfully recreated the disheveled, perfectly grubby aesthetic of a fishing town. There may be plenty of reasons to not go back to 1976 Long Island (some of them logistical), but the subtle ribbing and affectionate reminiscences that comprise “Diggers” can make you yearn for it nonetheless.